


Whatever May Come

by girlskylark



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Orchestra, Asexual Character, Asexuality, Dublin (City), Gay Keith (Voltron), Irish Keith, Keith (Voltron) Has Two Moms, Keith wears glasses, Lance (Voltron) is a Dork, M/M, Medical Conditions, Medical Procedures, Musicians, Photographer Keith, Pining Keith (Voltron), Socially Awkward Lance (Voltron), ace lance, dragon klance bang, flirty keith, klbb, violinist lance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-01
Updated: 2018-01-01
Packaged: 2019-02-18 20:42:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13108161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlskylark/pseuds/girlskylark
Summary: Keith has a problem. After finding out about his impending blindness, his worries about school spiral into an obsession over the blind spot in his vision getting bigger. Surgery is inevitable, but he could really do without having people touch his eye every goddamn time he visits the doctor's office.Lance has a problem. As a violinist in a traveling orchestra, one of the ways he can keep his first chair seat is by not going deaf, which really shouldn't be an issue until obnoxiously-frequent vertigo lands him in the doctor's office with a tumor in his ear canal. With his career on the line, Lance is stuck in Dublin, Ireland until his surgery is over and his recovery is done with.Being alone in Ireland becomes increasingly more interesting when Lance stumbles into the path of Keith's oncoming moped.[With art byamarukeiandmistydragonflyart]





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had the AWESOME pleasure of working with two artists for the [Dragon Klance Big Bang](https://klbb2ds.tumblr.com/): [amarukei](http://amarukei.tumblr.com/) and [mistydragonflyart](http://mistydragonflyart.tumblr.com/) :D I'll link their work where it corresponds to the chapter/imbed it where it relates to the scenes. They have both been incredibly patient while I strangled my writer's block to finish this XD

Life had a funny way of introducing an unfortunate series of events, and Keith wouldn’t have been so bitter about it if he knew that it’d be followed by something great that would overshadow the bad. There was no way for him to determine that, no way for him to see it coming, because for now, he was trying to cope with the idea of blindness without fully being there yet.

He was sure his brain felt the loss of his sight more than his eye did, but his mother was hopeful. She was always hopeful, and perhaps if she had been a bit less hopeful at times, he would have trusted this spark of it a bit more. It was difficult to trust the advice of someone who was incessantly happy their entire life without having touched a bit of darkness.

He did appreciate her certainty, though, especially after the technician left the room, and likewise, left Keith to the panic rising and causing his eyes to burn up with unshed tears. He hadn’t even processed anything beyond the word “surgery.” Quite honestly, he didn’t know what was going on.

“It seems like you’re in good hands,” his mum said, giving his shoulder a squeeze before rubbing his back up and down. That just seemed to cause his composure to loosen and shatter. “Hey—Hey, it’s okay. They can fix it! You’ll be back to normal in no time—”

“But _surgery_ ,” he said, breaking. “I don’t want you to pay for it…” But honestly, they had no choice. It was either surgery, and fix his vision, or lose it forever by the sound of it.

He hadn’t realized that the doctor was describing a problem that couldn’t be fixed with antibiotics or medication. The doctor prodded around his bad eye for a good thousand years until it watered and pulsed from being poked at. Keith recalled sitting with his mum, watching some diagram’s retina bubble out from the wall of its eye.

“It’s okay, Keith. We can afford it, and my insurance will cover over half of it. You’ve never been a problem until now,” she laughed, making light of the situation as he rubbed at his eyes. Paranoia made him pull his fingers away. Who knew what would tip the scale at this point, especially after he spent several months with a gradually failing _retina_.

“I don’t want to get surgery if I don’t have to,” he said.

“Which means we’ll just have to do the surgery. It won’t be a problem, hun,” she said, leaning forward because he couldn’t raise his eyes up from his lap. She smiled at him and added, “You’ll be in and out and they’ll put you under so you won’t remember or feel a thing.”

Keith took in a shuddering breath, trying _so hard_ to let his mum’s reassurance seep in. There was a mirror on the technician’s desk, and he could see his red face in the corner of it when his mum reached over and tucked him in her arms. “It’ll be okay. Okay? Are you okay with this, sweetie?”

_No_. He swallowed hard. _How did this even happen? How did I let this happen?_

From the moment they left the room, to scheduling the surgery, to leaving the sky-high building, Keith backtracked to what could have caused this without fully _knowing_ what “ _it_ ” was. Could it be from all the countless hours he spent on his computer? Could it be from sitting too close to the television screen when he was a kid? Was it from making funny faces and now his eyes were going to be stuck the way they were whenever he crossed them? 

It was ridiculous and he knew it, but his brain couldn’t stop hypothesizing the totally-out-there idea that maybe a meteorite crashed through the atmosphere and dissolved into a million minuscule specs, and one of them maybe-possibly landed in his pupil and pierced his retina wall—

He took a deep breath as he approached the passenger door and yanked it open. 

Both he and his mum dropped into the car. She reached over and gave his shoulder a squeeze, rubbing the back of his neck as she said, “You want something to eat? We could get something special.”

“Um, sure.” _Whatever_.

“Okay. Where would you want to go?” she asked, and when he didn’t answer, she started rattling off restaurant names, and he stopped her at “Solstice _._ ” 

Solstice was a favorite guilty pleasure for Keith that was only indulged on rare occasions. Keith wasn’t surprised that his mum offered it up as an option, since they both ended up bent over on the bar stools, sucking down glasses of beer from the tap. Keith glanced at his mum from over the lip of his glass, tipping it back in time with her until all the white foam was on his upper lip or down in his stomach. 

He finished down his glass first, gasping, and his mum set down her glass a few seconds later. “Elen would be proud,” she laughed.

“She always beats me anyways,” he huffed, resting his head on his hand. His feet tapped on one of the tongs of the bar stool. Unlike most bars, Solstice was alight with their high ceiling glittering from the stained glass windows over their heads. The exposed brick on the walls were covered with paintings and canvases—either that or mirrors over the booths. Keith turned his gaze back to where his mum was watching him, head tipped thoughtfully as he mumbled, “Not much of a winning time-breaker there.”

“Well… for the sake of today let’s just say you broke a personal record. Cheers.” They clinked empty glasses a moment before one of the bartenders walked out of the back room with their sundaes set and ready for them. The man slid it across the countertop to them, and Keith reached out for his, grasping it, and tugging it close so that he could cradle his arms around it as he spooned mouthfuls of mint chocolate onto his tongue.

He licked off the spoon after each bite as his mum said, “This will be interesting. I can’t say I know anyone who’s gone and detached their retina before.”

“Mum…” he whined. 

“Honestly! How many people can go and say that when they’re not already eighty-some-years-old? Are you secretly eighty years old?” she asked under her breath, leaning in to say it, and then giggle when Keith groaned and let his head fall into his arms. “I guess we’re just lucky that it wasn’t an _immediate_ thing, you know? I bet you’d be in surgery _as we speak—_ ”

“Don’t say that, Mum…”

“ _What_? All I’m saying is that this could be _infinitely_ worse,” she said, taking a spoonful of fudge, and licking it off with vigor. 

Keith moped around his sundae until it was soggy and blended together into the color of concrete. He fished out the cherries, eating them one-by-one. He figured that if he was going to go blind, at least he knew what sundaes looked like when they melted to the bottom of his bowl.

 

* * *

 

Lance was, to put it lightly, _devastated_. 

He couldn’t remember the last time he felt so paralyzingly helpless. It was an over-exaggerated reaction, yes, but it managed to throw his entire world off-center, leaving him clinging to the edge. 

He twisted his hands around in his lap, alone with the doctor and her assistant. He could vaguely hear them, and it suddenly spiked a whole other set of worries that were just waiting to tumble over and out of his mouth in sobs. It was _embarrassing_ because his teammates could tell—his friends could tell—pretty much everyone but him. 

“You have three options,” the doctor said. “Acoustic neuromas grow slowly, so we can wait and watch, see if it grows at all. They aren’t cancerous at all, so no need to worry about that. Or we could schedule you up for surgery to remove the tumor. If you decide to go that route, there’s several ways about it and my assistant will explain the procedures. _Or_ , we could go with radiation therapy. We can do that in multiple sessions or just one session. It’s up to you.”

“I—Um… could I think about it?” he asked. He couldn’t think right now, and was surprised he could even form words. 

“Of course. Would you like me to come back, or would you want to call in and let us know?” she asked, and Lance feebly requested to call in. “Again—this isn’t incredibly time-sensitive. Right now your acoustic neuroma is small and easy to manage. My assistant’s going to show you what the procedures are like so that you have all of the information to make a decision. Feel free to take your time before coming back.”

With that, the doctor left. The assistant pulled up a chair, sliding out a binder full of… _delightful_ pictures of the inside of some illustrated ear. He tried not to let the subtle, infrequent ringing in his ears distract him from the fact that it was a _goddamn tumor causing all of this_.

As he left the hospital, he couldn’t believe that there was extra _flesh_ in his ear. Like, what made his ear decide to do that? Who did it think it was? He wondered if all those times he checked his weight on a scale, it increased because of the amount of _extra flesh in his ear_. He knew he was being ridiculous, and he kept telling himself that, but as he walked away from the hospital, he couldn’t stop dragging his hands through his hair and worrying his lip between his teeth at the thought of having to pay for a surgery he didn’t want, in a country that wasn’t his own—but then again, what country _did_ he consider home nowadays? He hadn’t been to America in over five years…

Just as he was about to cross the street, something screeched to the right of him, and he turned just in time to squeal and try and shimmy out of the way of an oncoming moped. The wheels skidded to the left, narrowly dodging Lance but still managing to nick him in the arm with its handle. 

“ _GOD! Watch it!_ ” Lance cried out. “What are you, _blind?!_ I’m right here!”

The driver stopped the moped a few paces ahead of him, tearing off their helmet and turning with an apology that was _completely lost to Lance_ because _wowza_. Could he appreciate that man’s aesthetic or _what?_ Though, Lance supposed he always had a nonexistent type of biker guys, even if they _were_ riding on the tricycle-form of one. 

“—you alright?” the biker asked, and Lance’s knees nearly gave out at the Irish accent that covered him in shivers. 

“I—um, what?” Lance squeaked, voice high-pitched. He was still standing in the middle of the road, and hurried over to get a closer look. 

“I asked if you alright,” the man said. “I honestly didn’t see you at all—you came out between the cars. I swear I bumped you though—”

“Oh, no, I’m fine, really,” he insisted, ignoring the bruise that was throbbing on his elbow. “That’s, ah, that’s a cool moped.”

“Thanks. She’s vintage. My name’s Keith, by the way,” he said, plucking his glove off to shake Lance’s hand.

“Lance.”

“American?” he asked, and Lance flushed. He was always embarrassed to admit it these days. “What brings you all the way to Dublin?”

“I, uh, I actually perform. Sort of,” he confessed, wincing. He nearly forgot about that, and all the problems that could conspire with his _acoustic neuroma_. For fuck’s sake. “You… live here?”

“Yeah, since I was little. My mums love it here,” Keith confessed, and his words drifted into a smile as he studied the way Lance was likely grinning boyishly at him. “Say—why don’t I take you out for a drink or two? Make up for nearly running you over.”

It sounded like a date, and Lance was thrilled that he didn’t get the usual, gut-wrenching anxiety from it. Saying “yes” was never so easy. 

 

* * *

 

Lance didn’t have much to do that day (aside from tumble into a downward-spiral of sheer panic), so he accompanied this peculiar Irishman as he checked the names of restaurants until he pegged one down that he claimed had “excellent decor.” Lance hadn’t been in Dublin for more than a week, and despite all the sightseeing he and his best friend Hunk went through… there was no way they could have fit in everything. So, naturally, Lance was in awe for his first experience with anything that involved new and exciting places.

“This is it,” Keith said with a “tada!” sort of stance as he gestured to the red exterior and golden door handles. Lance tugged off his knitted scarf with a grin, wrapping it around his arm as Keith raised his eyebrows to him. “Well?”

“Well? I think we should go inside, don’t you?” Lance laughed. 

Keith rolled his eyes, sauntering up to hold open the red door for Lance. “How long have you been staying here?” he asked as they navigated to the bar that followed the length of the narrow restaurant all the way to the back through a set of decorative arches. The lights glowed upwards, reflected off of the ceiling, and cast an orange glow over Keith’s hands as he stretched them out over the bar surface, lifting a hand to call the bartender over.

“Um… a week. Yeah, about a week,” Lance said, flushing madly when Keith caught him staring. It was so unlike him to stare at someone the way he did Keith, but he couldn’t help it. Some people were just worth memorizing, and his intuition told him that this stranger was _definitely_ worth it. 

“You said you’re a performer?” Keith said, and smiled when Lance ducked his head. “Bit shy for a performer.”

“It’s not—well, I’m a musician,” he confessed, and he could sense the way Keith’s eyebrow raised. “I’m… in an orchestra. So… it’s not like I have to face a crowd of people alone and break out into a monologue or anything.”

“Orchestra? Sounds bit fancy,” he said, and turned to the bartender as they slid his drink to him. Lance reached for his own beverage, and had it been any other day, he wouldn’t have picked an Irish cider. And with all the fall weather, he was feeling especially down for a bit of alcoholic autumn in a glass.

“I don’t know. The places we go to are pretty fancy, I guess.” Lance shrugged. The inside of his head felt fuzzy to begin with, and so he rubbed at his temple and then his ear. He used to think that the thing clogging up his hearing was just a ball of earwax he just couldn’t get out, but now… 

He took a long drink.

“What instrument do you play?” Keith asked.

“Hm? Oh, violin. I’ve been playing since I was little. My mom used to play the violin so… I just fiddled around on her old one and took classes and… here I am.”

“Impressive. How old are you anyway?” 

“Twenty.”

“Same here. Cheers—” They clinked glasses and drank to it. 

As they set their glasses on the countertop, Keith pressed the back of his hand to his mouth to rid it of foam as Lance said, “So tell me about you, handsome moped-rider?”

Keith chuckled, which turned into a giggle that had Lance’s toes curling. “ _Ha_ , well, I’m just in uni at the moment. I was just leaving classes, actually, when I bumped into ya.”

“What are you studying?” 

“Photography,” he confessed. “But I’m also interested in English. I read a lot more than I should… it’d be nice to work for a publishing company one day. I’m shit at writing, but I’m pretty good at tearing apart books.”

“What, with your bare hands?”

“ _No_ , just—oh, shut up!” Keith laughed, nudging Lance in the arm, who was giggling maniacally. “ _God_ , that was something my friend would say.”

“Oh? Friend who?”

“Their name is Pidge. They like to piss me off, saying shit like that,” Keith laughed with a wave of his hand. 

“Sounds like an excellent friendship.”

“It’s shit. What about you? Any friends in your fancy orchestra?” Keith asked with a smile before tipping his mug back against his lips. Lance took a moment to appreciate the way Keith’s Adam’s apple bobbed when he swallowed. _It should be illegal for people to look this good_ , Lance thought, wishing he could take a picture and send it to everyone he knew.

“Um… yeah. Yeah, I do. They’re all at the hotel now. I snuck off because… well, no need to get into _that_ , but… I have a close friend. I call him Hunk and we joke around. We’ve been friends for _ages_. Actually—we were in the same program back in the US. It was an accelerated partially-online school program and we commuted together on the bus to lab classes and became friends.”

“Accelerated?”

“Yeah. Well—I graduated high school early to focus on the orchestra. I’ve been traveling for five years.”

Lance took a sip from his glass as Keith processed it. He watched Keith’s curious expression turn to one raised eyebrow, to two, and then he shook his head as if to say, “Wait a minute—” Lance laughed and offered an explanation, “I got my diploma online when I was in Australia. I was sixteen.”

“ _Still_ , that’s—That’s incredible. Cheers.” They toasted and drank again. “Can’t say I’m a protégé or anything like that.”

“You’re in college—that’s something,” Lance insisted. “If my entire life wasn’t dedicated to music, I’d be in college right now.”

Keith gave him a bland look, and then sighed. He tugged his sleeve back to check the time, and Lance just thought it was interesting that he even _owned_ a watch. It looked expensive as well, like it was either passed down or bought new to look both pristine and vintage. “Got somewhere to go?” Lance asked.

“Oh, no. As I said—no more classes tonight,” he said. “And yourself?”

“Nothing. I think Hunk and I were going to go sightseeing though… we have a matinee performance tomorrow, and so I told my row that we’d be meeting up tonight for a practice.”

“Sounds like heaps of fun,” Keith said, and Lance just rolled his eyes. “Would you want me to drive ya back to wherever you’re staying?” 

“I guess that depends—are you planning on running over any other pedestrians?” he asked, and Keith flicked him in the arm before reaching back for his wallet. Lance did the same, but Keith waved him off and slid a red euro and a few coins across the bar. “You don’t have to pay for me,” Lance insisted. 

“I nearly ran you over. Besides, I was plannin’ on getting a drink anyhow. God knows I needed it,” Keith sighed as he spun around. 

Lance’s jaw dropped, and he scrambled after Keith, saying, “My drink was so expensive though! Oh, come _on—_ ”

Lance grumbled after Keith as they wandered back through the red doors. Lance figured he’d indulge himself to a cider after The Big News, but now he was worrying about the new hole in Keith’s wallet because of him. Whatever the case, he seriously needed that drink, and he was feeling better after having a wonderful chat with that black-haired no-longer-stranger named Keith. 

They delayed their return to the moped by taking a loop around the block. Lance zipped up his coat and tucked his hands in his pockets as he listened to Keith rant about this-or-that in terms of professors and classes, and his friend named Pidge. Lance was content listening to it all, and laughed himself silly over the stories. They talked like they’d known each other for ages before meeting each other on the street that day, and their paths just happened to cross again. 

Some part of Lance’s chest felt heavier from the warmth, and perhaps it was the way his heart raced faster when Keith used cute voices for his friends like, “—And I go into this place every other day and they have the nerve to be like, ‘Oh, he’s gonna get plump off our cinnamon rolls.’ Oh, _fuck off_ , Pidge, I doubt they’d make it through the day if I didn’t go in there. I swear their boredom is gonna drive ‘em to murder one a these days.”

“And what is this place?” Lance asked, tucking his smile behind his scarf. 

“It’s this café by my house. It’s in the suburbs and it’s tucked into the corner of an alley. It’s hard to spot from the road, so it’s kind of like a secret spot for the locals to avoid all the damn tourists—no offense. I wouldn’t go there to avoid _you_ , I mean,” Keith said, and hardly seemed phased by it, or the fact that Lance’s ears turned pink. 

“Pidge works there?”

“Yeah, which is _ironic_ because they’re _shit_ at customer service. Ya walk in there and they’re already glarin’ at you from the other side of the counter. The only reason they work there is ‘cause their brother owns the place and it’s easy hours for classes.”

“Oh?”

“Normally we wouldn’t have to work during semesters but Pidge an’ their brother need the help,” he explained, and shook his head with a hiss. “Sorry—that’s—you probably don’t need to know about that shit.”

“I don’t mind. I mean… I don’t know if we’ll see each other again, but… I’d love to meet Pidge and visit this weird hole-in-the-wall café,” Lance said as they wandered around the corner, and spotted the moped across the way. It was red and white with tanned seats, and absolutely _riddled_ with stickers that were more or less crumbling apart on the paint job. 

Keith huffed under his breath, mumbling something Lance couldn’t quite comprehend. He worried it was because his hearing was going, and so he asked, “What?”

“Oh, nothin’. Just—when do you leave again? What’s the next destination?” Keith asked. 

“Belfast. We’ll be leaving in a week and a half,” Lance said. “We usually stick around a place for a month or so and move on. So… Ireland for a month.”

“Then before I forget: would you want to swap numbers?” Keith asked, pulling his phone from his leather jacket pocket. Lance’s heart fluttered, thinking about how much he wanted to keep talking to Keith, if only to hear that cute accent on the phone again. 

Lance added his contact to Keith’s phone as Keith said, “If you have another free day before you leave, I could show you around. My family’s into hiking, so if you ever want to go a bit further out from the city, there’s a few places I could show you.”

“That sounds _great_. Oh my God, I’d love to,” Lance gasped, and Keith laughed at his enthusiasm. 

Keith steered them back on track to finding Lance’s hotel, and thankfully, he was savvy enough with the map of Dublin to know exactly where it was without having to double-check. Lance secured the helmet on his head before they started off, and felt his heart go wild in his chest at the thought of riding a moped through this beautiful, foreign city with his arms around this beautiful, foreign boy and _God—_

Lance could get used to this.

 

* * *

 

His hand went over his good eye, and lifted away. He put it back, and watched his outstretched hand disappear from his inner peripheral vision. He never considered it terrifying, or worrisome, that it looked like his nose was growing over his left eye even though it wasn’t. His world was comprised of something appearing to be constantly in the way of what was ahead of him. It felt and _was_ as though his eyes were too far apart, but close enough to overlap and give him double vision. 

Keith lowered his hand again, blinking fast at his reflection as heat swelled behind his eyes. He hated that he couldn’t control this factor in his life. He couldn’t tell his retina to _stay where it was_. He couldn’t control it any more than he could control the fact that he was going to have to start wearing his glasses again. Just the act of plucking out his contacts for the day felt like he was prodding his retina further and further from the walls inside his eyes.

Someone appeared in the doorway behind him, so he turned to glance at the worried look on his mother’s girlfriend’s face. “You’re back,” Keith commented. “How was your trip?”

“Fine,” Elena said, tipping her head to the side as she strolled into the bathroom to stand beside him. Her arms were crossed, hair twisted back into a dozen braids that converged into a short, messy ponytail. 

Elena, or as Keith’s mum liked to call her, The Beautiful, The Daring, The One And Only Elen, had been in Keith’s life for nearly all of grade school. They were on and off for a few of the starter years, and so she came in and out of Keith’s life for a good chunk of his adolescence before settling back in around the time he started university. As far as his mum’s girlfriends went, Elen was by far his favorite pick.

“Your mum told me what the deal is. With your eye.” She pointed to her own eye, wincing as she said it, studying him through their reflections on the wall.

“I’m trying not to think about it,” he confessed. “I have a week to pretend that nothing’s wrong and… that’s what I’m gonna do.”

“What do all those books say? ‘Ignorance is bliss’?” she said, turning on her heels to head back to the door. Keith scoffed, reaching up to tie his hair back as Elena stopped at the threshold to say, “I’m sure it’s going to be fine. I hear the surgery has a high success rate.”

“That’s what they _all_ say. They’re just tryna take all our money away claiming that it’ll do some good,” Keith muttered, snapping the hair tie into place. 

“Yes, I’m sure that’s _exactly_ what they’re doing,” she remarked with a laugh. 

“Have you ever had surgery before?” he asked.

She hesitated for a moment, and hummed in thought before shaking her head. “No, not really. I’ve had stitches before, but I don’t count that as surgery. Nothing I had to be put under for, that’s for sure.”

“Yeah, that doesn’t count then…” Keith sighed, following after Elena into the room just so he could flop face-first onto his bed and groan. He curled up into a ball of righteous anger and peeked open an eye to watch Elena raise her eyebrows at him. “I don’t want people prodding at my eye.”

“Does anyone, really?” she laughed, and he honestly loved her high-British accent, but now he couldn’t _stand it_. He shoved his pillow over his head and groaned, voice all squeaky and pitched until Elena laughed and said, “Fine then—I’ll leave you to it.”

“Thank you…” he moaned, and the instant his bedroom door was shut, he threw the pillow off, rolled onto his back, and stared at the ceiling. He stretched a hand up and winked his good eye closed. 

Now you see it.

Now you can’t.

He stretched his phone high over his head and flicked it on. No notifications. Perhaps it was because he hadn’t texted Lance yet. His chest got all mangled just thinking about Lance, and the fact that he even _got_ the guy’s number in the first place. It was a long shot, but evidently, Lance liked Keith as much as Keith liked Lance at the time.

_You’re probably torturing him by not texting_ , he told himself, but it was instantly followed by, _Your ego’s too big_.

He sniffed, rubbing a hand underneath his glasses as he pulled the phone closer and opened Lance’s contact. Now or never.

 

* * *

 

Lance’s voice echoed from down the corridor, increasing in speed and pitch as he ran up several flights of stairs. He skidded around the corner, nearly bumping into one of the flutists on the way. “Sorry! Oh gosh,” he squeaked, apologizing again when he realized there were several others trailing along with them. They all laughed, peering after him as he ran off screaming, “ _Huuuunk!_ ” 

He skidded to the open dressing room door where a collection of the cellos were stationed in the theatre. Hunk was among them, perched on a stool by the window, already dressed for the concert. His tailcoat hung behind him off of the stool, and his cuffs were all in order where he had his hands braced on his lap. Lance beamed when he saw his best friend, and he happened to run in at the exact moment Hunk was laughing at something one of his friends said. 

[“Hunk!”](https://78.media.tumblr.com/52d87d800ab63c6fbe583b1b9ddcfd22/tumblr_p1vulvLYcq1qdiux4o1_540.jpg) Lance cried out, skidding into the room and between duffle bags and hung-up dry-cleaned suits. 

“Jesus—I heard you yelling, like, three floors down,” Hunk laughed. “What gives?”

Lance started prancing around because he had no words. He bounced around Hunk’s stool, waving his arms in the air and shrieking before he finally settled on holding out his phone, text conversation open, and Keith’s name at the top. Lance gave an exasperated expression when Hunk raised an eyebrow, and he gestured wildly to the phone. “This is _him_! It’s _The Guy!_ ”

“Wait, wait, wait, _Thee_ Guy? The fabled, tall-dark-and-handsome Irishman?” Hunk said, and Lance clutched his phone to his chest, nodding his head. He bit his lip to keep his smile from cracking his skull in two. “Well, what’d he say!” 

“It’s just a confirmation text to see if this is me,” he said.

“And?”

“And what?”

“Well, did you tell him it’s _you?_ ” Hunk cried out, and Lance yelped, realizing the dilemma. “You have to tell him it’s you! He probably thinks you gave him the number to some old geezer in Boca Raton!”

“What do I say!”

“Your _name_ , for one!” 

“Hunk, how do I do this? I don’t know what to tell him! I’ve never had this dilemma before! Hunk, save me! Save me!” Lance exclaimed dramatically, swooning into Hunk’s lap as the cello players in the room snickered at their antics. Hunk rolled his eyes, plucking the phone from Lance’s fingers.

“You’re _helpless,_ I swear to _God_ ,” he said.

“Thanks, Hunk,” Lance said, perking up to lean over Hunk’s shoulder. “Try not to make me sound too desperate. Or that I’m coming on too strong.”

“Wow, wouldn’t it be a concept if _you_ would just write this?” he laughed, tapping out a few words before reciting, “‘Hey, this is Lance— _winky face_ —Fancy seeing you around here.’”

“It’s perfect,” Lance gasped, pressing his cheek to Hunk’s shoulder. “I’m amazed. You know me so well.”

“You want me to send it?”

“Yeah, it’s good. Thanks buddy.”

“No problem.” Hunk locked the phone and passed it back to Lance. “Have you talked to Allura yet?”

Just hearing their conductor’s name caused Lance’s smile to drop instantly. He’d been worrying his lip between his teeth all that day and the day before just thinking about what he’d say to Allura about _The Big News_. He went through every worst-case-scenario in his head last night—in between, well, thinking about _Keith_ , but that’s another story. He couldn’t sleep with those two things stuck in his ear canal, whispering in his ear sweet nothings filled with _impending doom_.

“You have to talk to her, Lance…” Hunk said.

“About what?” one of the cellos asked—Ezor was her name, and she’d always been nice to Lance. 

Lance shared a look with Hunk, who shrugged. He never pegged Ezor as a gossip, but they were in a room with four other people besides the three of them—word traveled fast. But he was going to tell Allura anyways, so it didn’t matter _what_ people knew. Everyone would find out sooner or later, and he couldn’t keep it a secret, especially when they all depended on him.

He took in a deep breath, and let it ease out of his system before saying, “I went to the doctor’s yesterday and… sounds like I have a tumor. In my ear. It’s been causing me to go all topsy-turvy sometimes.”

Ezor’s eyes went wide, and she looked around at the others in the dressing room, who stopped what they were doing to watched the way Lance turned pink under the attention. The tension in his eyes would have burst forth had Hunk not wrapped an arm around his shoulders and given him a squeeze. 

“Oh, hun…” Ezor sighed, leaning over the back of her chair. “I’m so sorry. Are you able to get it fixed? Surgery or something?”

“There’s a few options. But… it seems like surgery is inevitable at this point. I need to talk to Allura because—um—recovery is intense,” he confessed, grimacing as he thought about it. 

He had to tell his violinists soon. He dreaded even more conversations about this, but the hugs were appreciated. As Ezor stood up to hold him and squeeze him around the shoulders, he thought about how this felt like a death sentence. He couldn’t let this surgery be the death of his career, but… how would he recover, even _after_ recovering from surgery? Would Allura take him back? 

“Let me know if you want me there when you tell Allura. I’ll back you up on whatever decision you make,” she told him, clasping him by the shoulders and giving him a firm shake. He nodded—he didn’t trust his voice at this point.

The speaker in the dressing room popped into action, a voice crackling over it to inform them that they had to be on stage in ten minutes. Lance left the cellos to their preparations, and started back down the hall, back down the stairs, and in the direction of the stage where his violinists were gathering behind the curtains. 

He recognized Acxa, with her inky black hair, and how she always gave him a slow look that seemed unimpressed, but amiable all the same. She wasn’t one for smiling, but he imagined that was her way about it. 

“He arrives once more,” she commented. “How’s it going?” 

“Fine. I was just looking for Allura. I have to ask her something—have you seen her?” he asked, voice fading as he looked all across the stage and behind it, and around Acxa and the violinists with her. Acxa pointed across the stage, and he followed her gesture to where his conductor’s long, braided hair separated her from everyone else. She was speaking to one of the stage hands off between the curtains, looking just as elegant as every other show. 

The curtain was closed, and Acxa pointed off across it. “Over there. We’re gonna start getting settled.”

“Okay. I’ll meet you all over there,” he promised, and hurried off across the stage. His shoes clicked with every step across the wood flooring, picking up speed as he reached the other side, and waiting patiently for Allura to finish up with the stage hand. 

His heart was racing in his chest, rising in his throat, constricting his air supply with the speed his mind was running at. He couldn’t think of anything other than Allura’s gut-wrenching _disappointment_ —

“Lance,” she said off to the side, pulling his attention back to her. “What is it? You’re white as a sheet. Are you feeling ill?”

“I—no. Well, not _really_ ,” he said. “I just had to talk to you about something.”

“Is it the vertigo?” she asked, and he winced. Sometimes it was like she could read his mind. “Oh no, what is it?”

Lance said it without hardly processing it, and simply watched as Allura kept her composed exterior, waiting for Lance to finish describing the procedure, the recovery, the problem and all that they faced with it. In the span of two minutes, the weight of his acoustic neuroma became a monumental setback. 

Allura tapped a hand to her chin, eyes slightly wider than before. She looked so beautiful that Lance felt awful causing her concern for him to rise. “But—your hearing? How is it?”

“Sometimes it feels like I have cotton in my ear,” he confessed. “But my pitch is still fine! It’s not—I don’t think it’s a problem, I swear.”

“Lance… be truthful with me.”

“I _am_ , I swear,” he insisted. “I didn’t know it was an issue before, and it hasn’t caused any problems with me or the other violinists. I’m still able to go on with tuning but—”

“You can’t let this just sit there, Lance,” she told him sternly, and her harsh stare made tears swell up in his eyes. “You’re an _excellent_ choirmaster, Lance, and I don’t want to lose you, but… you _have_ to get this taken care of. There’s just no way around it.”

“It’s still small and the doctor said we could just observe it for a while—I could probably make it to Germany—”

“That’s _months_ from now. Who knows what will happen to you by then?” she sighed, pinching her fingers over the bridge of her nose. Lance pressed the backs of his hands to his cheeks, trying to push the heat back. “I don’t mean to alarm you right before the concert, but this isn’t something we can sit and watch. I had a friend a while back who had an acoustic neuroma, and the surgery…”

“What? What about it?”

A flock of musicians were hurrying onto the stage on the other side of the curtain behind them, rustling it and causing the heavy velvet to swish around their legs. Allura shook her head with a sigh. “Nothing. It’s fine. We can talk about this more tonight, but right now? I’d say that you have to schedule the surgery for after we leave for Belfast. Okay?”

Lance nodded mutely, and tucked his hands underneath his chin as Allura gave his shoulder a squeeze and started off to the stage. He could hear her elegant voice flitting between the rows, laughing among the musicians. Lance glanced over at where Hunk and Ezor were coming through the curtain across from him, along with all the other cello members. It was almost as if Lance was in a spotlight, catching the gaze of every cello player thinking, “The first chair is going deaf. We’re all doomed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [The art from this chapter by my bud Kei :D](http://amarukei.tumblr.com/post/169186251013)
> 
> **L I N K S :**   
>  [amarukei](http://amarukei.tumblr.com/)   
>  [mistydragonflyart](http://mistydragonflyart.tumblr.com/)   
>  [girlskylark](http://girlskylark.tumblr.com/)


	2. Chapter 2

Contrary to popular belief, Lance wasn’t the goofball the rest of his teammates made him out to be. Flirting made him feel icky and gross, but when he drank a little too much, it was all he could do—and his teammates saw him drunk enough times to know. He wasn’t much for small talk, but getting beyond that was a task he could rarely overcome. Thankfully, though, everyone in the orchestra was open and thrilling and _fun to be around_ , which made making close friends easier than ever. He spent countless nights in hotel rooms just lying on the ground with a dozen other people, talking about movies and books and music. 

And _God_ , was there a lot of those to talk about.

Traveling around gave Lance a few hobbies he couldn’t avoid. Books went around the orchestra like the plague, and Lance was given a few torn-up, battered, seen-better-days books that were passed down from row to row until it landed in his lap. He started reading because of it, and it filled the time between flights and train rides. 

Watching movies on the go gave Lance motion-sickness, but he enjoyed late-night movie nights with Hunk. He wasn’t much for snuggling, but he always made the exception for Hunk. They weren’t exactly strangers to it, Hunk knew well enough not to initiate a snuggle-fest without asking, and sometimes Lance just needed the comfort of his best friend. Most of the time, Lance hardly focused on the movie.

He tended to combine his boredom and stress into his _favorite_ pastime. It was something Hunk taught him a while ago, and so they took to sharing it as a common hobby. And that happened to be—

Knitting.

Another one of Lance’s quirks involved his remarkable inability to _function_ around the word “date.” So when Keith texted about meeting up again, he told Hunk and was given the firm belief that it would be, in fact, a date. 

“I really don’t think I want to date this guy,” Lance confessed as he purled the yarn, wrapping it around the needles, and pinching them off the ends. “But there really… isn’t anything new there.”

“Then don’t date him.”

“But you just _said—_ ” 

“I _know_. Forget I said it. I just think it’s sweet that he wants to take you out to coffee,” Hunk confessed, and Lance started knitting faster, as if he could stitch his anxiety between rows of knit-five-purl-five et cetera. Lance was practically grumbling it to himself as Hunk sighed and said, “I didn’t mean ‘take you out’ like a _date_.”

“It _sounds like it_. I bet he thinks it’s a date,” Lance sighed. He lowered his needles with a huff, whining, “I bet I came on too strong! He probably thinks I’m some loosey-goosey American boy!”

“Oh my God,” Hunk said, stifling his laughter behind his scarf. “I can’t believe I’m best friends with a _grandma_.”

“Rude!” Lance yelped, shoving Hunk in the arm.

A mechanical voice rang overhead on the bus speakers. They both looked up at it, and then to Hunk’s phone where they were keeping track of the bus stops. They had two stops to go. Lance worried his lip between his teeth until Hunk gave him The Look that told him to stop what he was doing. 

“I don’t blame you for being nervous,” Hunk said, returning to his knitting. “All I’m saying is that The Guy sounds like a real catch and… I’m just excited to meet him.”

“Thanks for diluting the romance for me, Hunk,” Lance confessed, turning his gaze down as he pouted and glance up at Hunk sheepishly. His friend offered one of his brilliant, pearly-white smiles and went back to knitting. 

Sure, Lance could handle a spontaneous outing with a tall-dark-and-handsome Irish stranger, but when it came to planning the next get-together, Lance enlisted Hunk to supervise. He couldn’t focus on having a good time if he didn’t have Hunk there to ensure nothing would go south. It didn’t help that Lance still considered Keith a complete stranger.

When they were a block from their stop, Hunk wrapped up his scarf and stuffed it into the tote bag they brought with. Lance handed him his knitting supplies and stood up, gripping hold of the seat in front of him. As the bus slowed, he watched the sidewalk approach, and the lamp post where he spied a pair of familiar combat boots dangling off of a brick mortared ledge. Keith sat there in his leather jacket, eyes following the windows of the bus before spying Lance through them. He waved, and Lance beamed despite himself.

Lance leaped off the bus, swinging the tote bag at his side as Hunk followed suit, tucking his hands in his jacket pockets. The second Lance looked up at Keith’s face, he startled himself with the sight of _those glasses_. Lance’s heart nearly went into cardiac arrest as Keith hopped off the ledge, nudging his circular glasses up, and said, “This the infamous Hunk?”

“I’m more _famous_ than _in_ famous,” Hunk confessed, offering his hand. “But yeah, that’s me. You must be Keith.”

“That I am. Nice to meet you,” he said, and gave Hunk’s hand a firm shake before turning to Lance, who was in awe of the two most incredible people meeting at last. It had only been two days. “I hope you don’t mind seeing me again. I figured you might not get much free time considering…”

“It’s fine. I don’t mind,” Lance insisted. “And I wanted to hang out with you again anyways—I- I mean, chances are you know all the best places around. Hunk and I have just been doing… classic touristy things. Like going on tour bus rides with the team.”

“Visiting Trinity College,” Hunk added, and Lance agreed.

“You’ve already been there?” Keith commented, eyes wide. “That’s where my classes are.”

“ _What?_ Are you kidding? It’s like Hogwarts over there!” Hunk exclaimed, and Keith’s laugh sounded like everything Lance ever wanted to hear in his entire life. Being in an orchestra couldn’t even compare.

They started walking as the bus pulled away from the curb. It was a gloomy morning, and the clouds weighed down to the ground, creating a ceiling over their head of impending rain. The concrete was still damp from the previous rain early that morning. Lance tried his best to keep his Converse dry by avoiding the puddles as Keith led the way.

“You said you’re leaving in a week and a half?” Keith asked. 

“Well… I’m not sure anymore…” Lance confessed. “I might be around a bit longer than that… which might mean we get to hang out more! We can go hiking and stuff, and I can tell you all about the orchestra!”

“Lance keeps a thorough diary complete with character profiles of everyone on the team,” Hunk explained, and Lance yelped in embarrassment, flicking his friend in the arm for it.

While Lance fretted over how much of a dork Hunk was making him out to be—which wasn’t exactly a _lie_ , but Keith didn’t need to know that _now_ —Keith found himself plotting the remainder of his week around Lance’s schedule. He’d have to figure out his classes, and organize how _that_ whole shit show was going to work out. He’d be missing two weeks of classes and due dates, which would then be followed by dancing around his mums’ schedules so that they could drive him to classes. He’d basically be in an eyepatch and incapable of riding his moped even _after_ his eye healed up…

But he was so eager to make _whatever this was_ work, even if Lance was still a stranger. He was amazed that someone his age had already traveled across the globe and back, and was now bumming around his home city in between _professional concerts_. He spent the night before wondering about what Lance sounded like on stage. He searched for symphonies in Dublin, and hopelessly wondered which one of them Lance was in so that maybe he could listen to Youtube videos that were too zoomed out to see Lance clearly, wherever he sat amidst wildly talented musicians. 

“Keith,” Hunk was saying, and it yanked Keith back to where they were standing on the corner of a street, not far from their destination. “I was just asking what made you want to hang out with a bunch of strangers. You don’t seem worried about that bit.”

“Don’t tease him,” Lance said.

“What? It’s an honest question!”

“Says the guy who helps drunk strangers get home safe.”

“Okay, A) called out and B) it was _one time_ —! Okay, maybe twice, but Ezor doesn’t count!”

Lance pursed his lips, hands on his hips, and stared Hunk down into submission until the bickering was over. “Remind me not to get into an argument with you about useless things,” Keith said, and looked away to avoid the adorable look on Lance’s face when his jaw dropped and he squealed, “It’s not _useless!_ ”

They stopped at the next curb to avoid getting run over by a horde of bicyclists that nearly cut Hunk’s leg off for straying too close to the edge. Keith flipped them off, and when Lance hastily yanked his arm down, Keith shouted, “Watch where you’re going, you _fucks!_ ” 

The bicyclists after that seemed more or less alarmed by Keith, and Lance and Hunk, who were surprise-laughing behind their hands as Keith erupted into a startled, “What? What are you laughing at! Give me my arm back.” He yanked his arm out of Lance’s grip as Lance burst into giggles.

“I could _never—_! I always wish I could cuss at strangers but I always wimp out,” Lance confessed.

“Oh yeah? Mr. _Watch it! What are you, blind?!_ ” Keith taunted in a high-pitched voice that was supposed to mimic the way Lance yelled at him that day they nearly clashed in the road.

Hunk was cackling hysterically as they crossed the street and hopped onto the next sidewalk that was riddled with crooked concrete. Lance hurried after Keith, fumbling all over his words and trying to form a comprehensible sentence that didn’t start with, “I-I- _you—!_ Keith—!”

Keith was all too familiar with this block—perhaps even _more_ familiar with it than the street his house was on. The café was in view of a riverside park that was cut between rows of apartments. There weren’t as many shops around here as there were in the downtown area, which made this café a bit of an anomaly in the middle of all of the apartment complexes. 

He stepped into the alleyway, which earned an alarmed squeak from Hunk until Keith said, “The entrance is over here.”

“I feel like he’s gonna murder us,” Keith heard Hunk whisper to Lance, which had him laughing under his breath as he reached for the door handle hidden among the bland grey bricks. 

He pulled it open, and reveled in the shocked breath he stole out of his guests. “The Holts are _really_ into bizarre spy movies,” Keith said.

Lance gasped, stammering, “Wait—You mean— _Thee_ Holts? As in _Pidge_?” 

Keith nodded, and as Lance rushed in with reckless abandon, he explained to Hunk, “Pidge is one of my good friends. I take pride in embarrassing them with the ridiculous stories I told Lance the other day.”

“Ah, as one does,” Hunk hummed, and thanked Keith for holding open the door. 

The café started with a narrow entryway flanked on either side by the same grey brick from outdoors. Their boots echoed on the hollow wood flooring before they followed the steps down to the main level. Keith watched as Lance experienced the first glimpse of The Holt’s lair, with its crested banners and old fashioned photographs that were hung across the wall that blocked the entrance from the main floor.

The windows were propped above them on the street level, and they cast stripes on the floor from where the windowpane cut through it. Lance stepped off of the stairs, staring up at the ceiling where the spotlights were, and then to the countertop where he spied a ginger headed teenager scowling at them. 

Their hair was cropped short, and buzzed on the sides where their glasses tucked behind studded ears. It was difficult to ignore just how hardcore this cashier was, and what further emphasized it happened to be the first words out of their mouth that touched Lance’s virgin ears: “You fucking _liar_. You said he was pretty.”

“Oh my God,” Keith whispered from the stairs. 

It had always been easy for Lance to ignore comments like those—even if it was the implication that he was “pretty”—but when it was implied that this knowledge came from Keith, Lance lost the ability to function. He never thought that he was meant to have expectations for _anyone_ , but somehow he felt like he was meeting those nonexistent expectations because _Keith thought he was pretty_.

Hunk was right, Lance _was_ helpless.

“No one calls Lance ugly without my permission,” Hunk declared. “Who do you think you are, bypassing authority rules.”

The stranger was so startled that their glasses magnified their widened eyes to the size of stop signs. They snorted and burst into laughter, drumming their hands on the counter before saying, “I wish—I could _adopt you_ — _into my family_.”

“This is such a blessing,” Hunk said, clasping his hand over his heart as he sidled up to lean against the counter.

“More like a curse,” Keith said. “Pidge, stop trying to convert people.”

“My religion is the only one that counts though,” they said. “We worship the sun because it’ll destroy us all one day and that’s what I’m praying for.”

“I aspire to that level of cynicism,” he said crossing his arms as he looked to Lance and nodded his head over to the cashier. “Now ya know Pidge. Pidge, this is Lance and his friend Hunk.”

“I feel like your cynicism levels are already pretty close,” Lance commented. 

“He has a lot to learn. I’ve been trying to convert him to Pidgism for over a decade now,” they confessed, leaning over the counter to prop their head up on both hands. “I developed it when I was eight.”

“Astounding,” Hunk said. “I support every bit of it.”

“Thank you. It’s the foundation of most of my morals.”

“Which is to say they have none,” Keith laughed as he pulled out his wallet and said, “Mind if I get a mug of coffee?”

“Of course I do,” they said, but they were already plucking out a mug from on top of the espresso machine. They were mismatched and looked as though they were bought from various thrift stores. The mug they picked out said _ASSHOLE_ on the front.

“ _Incredible_. Where’d you get all these mugs from?” Lance asked, reaching across the counter to inspect it as Keith pulled out a card.

“My brother, Matt, and I collect ‘em,” Pidge said with a smile that told Lance that they weren’t as gloomy as they made themselves out to be. “We like to make our own mugs too, so some of them are improvised. We spray paint on ‘em with stencils sometimes.”

“That’s so cool,” Hunk gasped, wandering over to take a look at the other ones.

“I’m buying for Lance and Hunk too, so just hang on to that,” Keith told them.

“What? You don’t have to,” Hunk insisted, and before Keith could start arguing, Hunk said, “I’ll pay for half then.”

“What about me?” Lance whined. “I’ll pay for a third of it.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. Then we’re just paying for our own drinks,” Keith said.

“Isn’t that how this is supposed to go?” he said, and was ruled out for the payment details after that. 

He grudgingly ordered a mocha because he couldn’t stand the taste of straight-up coffee, and was bitter that he was excluded from paying. There were stools at the main counter to the right of the bakery items, so they sat there as Pidge made their drinks and lingered around to chat. There weren’t many people coming in, but Lance noted a few kids hanging out on the couches and tables on their laptops with their headphones on, blocking out the casual, lyric-less music on the speakers. Lance’s drink came in a mug that said _SHARPSHOOTER_ with a crude sticker of Han Solo surrounded by a collage of other markings full of stars and cutouts of Chewy. 

“What’s in the tote?” Pidge asked, pulling a stool up to sit across from them. 

Lance looked down at it, forgetting that it was there, and picked it up to show them. “Hunk and I have been knitting a lot in between shows and traveling and stuff.”

“Knitting?” they snorted, and laughed at the bland look Keith gave them. “S-Sorry—oh my God, that’s so _corny_.”

“Is not!” Lance gasped.

“Knitting is a perfectly valid form of stress relief,” Hunk insisted. 

Lance whipped out Hunk’s scarf, and handed it to Keith to touch. “Hunk’s recreating Newt Scamander’s scarf ‘cause he’s a proud Hufflepuff.”

“Guilty,” Hunk said. He took out his lanyard to show Pidge his Hufflepuff badge that was pinned to the fabric. “I’ve been a Hufflepuff on all of the quizzes I take.”

“Really? I’m either a Ravenclaw of a Slytherin. It’s a pretty even divide,” they said. “I personally embrace my Slytherin half. I own a few Slytherin memorabilia myself.”

“I’m actually Slytherin,” Lance gasped, and Pidge laid a hand on their heart, startled. “I never knew why! I guess my aesthetic just gravitates towards Slytherin.”

“No way! High-five!” they exclaimed, reaching across to slap Lance’s hand. They grasped onto it then, sternly shaking it as they said, “I already love you.”

Lance let out a startled laugh as Keith threatened, “I am _this close_ to calling Matt.”

“I can handle that idiot,” Pidge argued, narrowing their eyes at Keith. They glowered at one another until Pidge let go of Lance’s hand with a sigh. “It’s not every day I meet a Slytherin. They are few and far between. We’re a dying race.”

“Are not! There’s several Slytherins just in the string section!” Lance said, pausing before saying, “Well… there’s nearly thirty of us and only five Slytherins… but _still!_ That’s more than nothing.”

Pidge _tsk_ ed, unimpressed. They continued to rattle on about what Lance and Hunk had and hadn’t seen yet, asked about their hobbies and interests, and after she took care of a customer who stopped in, asked what they were up to that week. Hunk hummed in thought, and looked to where Lance shrugged and said, “We have practice all tomorrow. And then I scheduled practice with my section for tonight in _preparation_ for tomorrow—”

“Wednesday? I don’t think I’m doing anything then,” Hunk confessed.

“Allura’s going with me to the hosp—appointment. I don’t know how long that’s gonna take. And then we’ve got a matinée on Thursday—”

“Matinée and evening performance on Friday…”

“Saturday…”

“Sunday,” Hunk groaned. 

“Not much time then, huh Keith?” Pidge said. “How’s that death sentence feel?”

Keith gave her a bland look and said, “Guess you’re stuck with me for a week then before I die, huh?”

Pidge stuck their tung out at him, and Lance went white as a sheet. “Wait, you aren’t serious…?”

“What? Fuck no—I’m just joking around,” Keith said.

“He’s going blind in a week,” Pidge said, and instantly Keith slapped them on the arm. “Ouchie! Watch the muscles, mister! I’ve been workin’ hard on ‘em.”

Keith put a hand over his glasses and sighed. 

“They’re… joking about that, right?” Hunk said, leaning over the counter as Keith dropped his hands and drummed them on the counter. He pursed his lips and shook his head. _No, not lying_.

“He’s having surgery next week Monday,” Pidge explained, and when Keith glared at them, they said, “What? Won’t matter if ya tell ‘em now! They won’t see ya next week anyway!”

“Surgery for what? What’s wrong with your eyes?” Lance asked, leaning in to see them better. The frame of Keith’s glasses got in the way. 

“I… _detached_ my _retina_ ,” he said. “Have to get a buckle thing wrapped around my eye or something. I made a point not to pay attention to the details…”

Keith saw Lance’s jaw drop from the corner of his eye, and his embarrassment on the matter only pitched higher. He always hated the fact that he needed glasses—it sucked that his anxiety over his contacts now prevented him from wearing them altogether. He left his house without looking in the mirror just so he wouldn’t have to see how Harry Potter-esque he looked in his glasses. 

_Ignorance is bliss_ , Elena had said.

“I don’t really want to talk about it,” he said, clearing his throat. “And you guys are leaving in a week-and-a-half anyways. Besides—you probably want to spend time with your orchestra group anyways.”

“Are you kidding? We spend all _year_ with them,” Hunk said. “And you’re getting a _what_ put on your eye?”

“I’ve done aggressive amounts of research on it since he told me,” Pidge said. “Most painful goddamn thing on Earth.”

“I don’t want to hear it…” Keith groaned. “I didn’t _ask_ for my retina to detach itself…”

“How did it happen?” Lance asked, sound just as shocked as he looked.

“It happens to elderly people,” Pidge threw out there, “and athletes. Keith is neither of those.”

“Thanks Pidge,” he sighed, resting his cheek on his hand. “And I don’t recall being clobbered over the head with a soccer ball recently. It’s been going on for a few months and I just figured I’d get it checked out.”

“What do you mean? What’s it like?” Hunk asked.

Keith shrugged and struggled for words before saying, “It’s like… my nose is obstructing part of my vision. Like my eyes are moving away from each other ‘cause the gap between them feels bigger. I sometimes get double vision, I guess.”

“Whoa. Is that why you’re wearing glasses now?” Lance asked. “You weren’t wearing them when we met.”

Keith pressed a hand to his glasses frame and turned redder by the second. He couldn’t stand having to wear them, though Pidge always made him feel better about it. At least his didn’t magnify the size of his eyes. 

“Doctor’s orders, I guess,” he said.

“I like them,” Lance insisted. “You shouldn’t feel bad about ‘em.”

Keith glanced at Lance out of the corner of his eye, trying to ignore how blatantly nonexistent half of Lance’s face was because of it. When he smiled, so did Lance, but the moment was ruined when Pidge cooed, “ _Aaaw!_ ” 

“I am _this close_ to punching you and detaching _your_ retina,” Keith snarled at them, and Lance and Hunk burst into a fit of giggles.

* * *

 

“I find it hard to believe that you didn’t grow up with Pidge,” Lance confessed later that afternoon. Hunk and Pidge hit it off, so naturally, Hunk found himself behind the counter with Pidge, learning how to use the espresso machine. Evidently, Mondays were slow in the afternoons, so it wasn’t a surprise to Keith or Pidge that they had a blank period of two hours in which only a handful of customers came in.

Keith sipped on his second mug of coffee, ignoring how it burned the roof of his mouth as it went down. “Why do ya say that?” he asked.

Lance shrugged and said, “I dunno. You two just… sorta give off that _vibe_ , you know? Like you were childhood friends.”

“You and Hunk give off that vibe,” Keith said, nodding over to their friends just as the steamer hissed, and let out a sharp jolt that had Lance jumping in his seat. An explosion of steamed milk went into the air, and Hunk screamed so loud the rest of the customers in the shop turned to look. Pidge cackled and slammed their fist against the counter, seeing how wide Hunk’s eyes went. 

“All good over there?” Keith asked with a laugh, and received a thumbs up from Hunk.

Keith shook his head, and turned his attention back to where Lance had his hands cupped around his half-empty chai—which he insisted on buying with his own money considering Hunk and Keith paid for his last drink. “I think it’s because you guys tease each other like siblings do,” Lance said, looking down at his hands and fiddling his thumb over the mug handle.

He looked so sweet and solemn that Keith couldn’t help but ask, “Do you have any siblings?”

“Yeah. I have two—Julian and Rosa. I’m the eldest,” Lance explained, voice low, as if afraid of being overheard. “I haven’t… seen them in a while.”

“Because you’ve been traveling?”

“That, and just because… I haven’t really wanted to go back home,” he confessed, shoulders slumping. “I just feel like… I outgrew that too early? I don’t know. Oregon isn’t the place for me anymore. And I don’t think—I _try_ to call them as often as I can, but no time ever seems right? And when I call on their birthdays, I just feel _fake_. Like I’m not a part of the family anymore. It’s ridiculous and—oh _God_ , I should probably stop talking. This is too depressing,” he rambled, putting his hands over his face.

“I don’t mind,” Keith confessed. “I like hearing about your life. It’s far more interesting than mine is, that’s for sure.”

“What? Are you kidding—you’re in _college_ and you’ve got _two moms_! _Two of them!_ ” Lance blurted out, and Keith laughed, waving him off. “I’m serious! You’ve got a lot going for you!”

“Right, that and the fact that if I go blind, college would have all been for naught. Photography minor, English major, ring a bell?” Keith said, gesturing to his glasses as Lance rolled his eyes.

“Pidge said the success rate for your surgery is ridiculous. You’ll be fine, trust me,” Lance said. He bit into his lip, and turned away to watch Pidge coax Hunk’s hand down, closer to the mug as he poured steamed milk over the espresso. Hunk wiggled the metal pitcher, and groaned when the latte art didn’t turn out as planned. _Lance’s_ surgery on the other hand…

“You look uncertain about that,” Keith laughed, and when Lance was about to argue, he insisted, “It’s fine. I know all about the success rate. I’m just worried about catching up in school. So while you and Hunk are out doing whatever, I’ll likely be trying to get ahead in all of my classes. I’ve only got a week, so…”

“Let me know if you need help—I- I mean, not that I’ll _be_ much help, but you know what I mean,” Lance said, and Keith watched Lance’s cheeks turn pink as he hid them behind his scarf. Keith wished it was possible to spend every goddamn day with Lance before the orchestra was due to head to Belfast, if only to see him blush time and time again. Keith hid his smile behind his hand. He knew exactly how idiotic he was being, but… he couldn’t help but trip over himself after spending years without considering his crushes to be anything more than that.

“I’ve been meaning to ask,” he said, clearing his throat. “What’s the name of your orchestra?”

“Oh! Altea Symphony,” he said. “We’re performing at the National Concert Hall for the end of this week and this weekend, and then we get the rest of next week off when we head out to Belfast. You should come see us!”

Keith turned into a mess because _yeah_ , he was planning on it, but that didn’t mean he wanted Lance to _know_. It felt like a more intimate version of Facebook-stalking someone—wait, that’s just called “stalking”… _dammit._

“I don’t—I mean, I’ll _try_. I can’t exactly go charging a ticket on my card without my mums knowin’ about it—”

“Then they should come too! Allura gives us a free ticket a month, but none of our friends outside of the orchestra live in Dublin,” Lance said, talking fast before abruptly calling Hunk’s name. “Hey! Do you still have your spare ticket?”

“Yeah, don’t you?”

“Well _yeah_. I’m gonna give it to Keith. I want his moms to come too!”

“ _Aaaw!_ ” Pidge cooed. 

“I’ve been wanting to hear you play,” Keith admitted, resting his chin on his hand as he glanced at Lance. The soft smile on his face, and the implication of some intimate one-on-one recital had Lance putting his hands on his cheeks as he turned away, trying to shove the heat back down. This weird sensation was what normally led him to end potential relationships before they even started. It made his anxiety spike and turn his emotions into a puddle of sappy _goo_ that stuck to him and made it impossible for him to shake.

Lance couldn’t understand why Keith was making him feel this way.

He found himself looking helplessly at Hunk for backup.

Hunk hesitated at the espresso machine, and floundered for another moment. He always came through, though, and an instant later he was checking his phone.

“Shit—I mean, I didn’t really expect to be out all afternoon,” he said. “And we still gotta figure out the bus situation heading back to the hotel…”

“Oh, right, that’s probably a good idea,” Pidge said. “If you need help figuring out transit—”

“We should be fine. That’s what Google’s for anyways,” Hunk said, wiggling his phone in the air as he headed around the countertop. “I mean, are you good to go, Lance? I bet the others are ordering pizza or something.”

“Yeah, pizza sounds good,” Lance said, hopping out of his stool.

They made their goodbyes hasty, and Lance couldn’t help but feel a bit guilty for the startled look on both Pidge and Keith’s faces. Still, when they made their escape, Lance dissolved into panicked excitement as he tried to strangle his adrenaline by the throat for doing this to him. It took about a block before Lance was able to form coherent words and explode with, “Oh my _God!_ Oh my God, he was so cute I don’t know what to do. Hunk! Help me!”

“Whoa, oh my God, you did this last time we met Eric Whitacre,” Hunk laughed, and Lance nearly swooned right then and there. He had to shove his hand in Hunk’s face to shut him up.

“We don’t speak of Our Lord And Savior Eric unless entirely necessary,” Lance whispered, and continued walking as Hunk slapped his hands over his face to hide his smile. “Besides, Keith and Eric both have luscious hair. But… Keith is definitely closer in age…”

“Uh, yeah, fifty-year-old-man doesn’t sound like an ideal fit for you,” Hunk told him. “And anyways—Keith seems to like you.”

“You think?” Lance said, falling back into step with Hunk as they approached the bus stop.

“ _Yeah_ , I mean, the way he looked at you sometimes made it kind of obvious,” he said. “And I was only paying attention _half_ the time.”

“Oh come on, you’re exaggerating.”

But he was already blushing, which meant he 100% believed in what Hunk was saying—that Keith really _did_ like him, at least enough to text him first that night when he and Hunk were relaxing in the hotel after indulging in too many slices of pizza. Lance sighed down at it, and then gasped at the sight of Keith’s name on the screen. Hunk wasn’t at all phased, as if he had been waiting for Lance to gasp at the sound of Keith causing his phone to vibrate.

 

 

**Keith:** _Hey  
_ _Did you make it back alright?_

**Lance:** _Yeah :)_

**Keith:** _Good :)  
_ _Hey I was wondering about something_

**Lance:** _Hm?_

**Keith:** _It’s just_  
_I’m not sure if  
__Hang on lemme word this properly before I make a fool of myself_

**Lance:** _We’re all fools here don’t worry about it_

**Keith:** _I know_  
_It’s just that I really like you and I don’t want to fuck this up_  
_But at the same time I don’t want you to feel pressured to do anything just for my sake_  
_Like, I’d hate for you to pity me or whatever and I guess…  
__Shit my eye situation probably doesn’t help with this…_

 **Lance:** _It’s fine Keith honestly_  
_And if it’s any consolation I really like you too :)_  
_And when it comes to the eye surgery thing_  
_Trust me  
__Not an issue_

**Keith:** _I guess I’ll just have to take your word for it  
_ _For the eye surgery thing anyways_

**Lance:** _??  
_ _You don’t believe me do you_

**Keith:** _It’s not… really that  
_ _Look: we don’t really know each other as well as we pretend to, and a chat at the bar and a… date at a coffee shop isn’t going to change that._

**Lance:** _Yeah I know that makes sense_

**Keith:** _And even then I can tell sometimes that you just  
_ _Don’t seem as into it as I am? And it feels like I’m pressuring you into shit and that’s definitely not my intention_

**Lance:** _Yeah sorry about that  
_ _And work doesn’t really help with that. It’s kinda my first priority above anything else_

**Keith:** _So you don’t deny it?  
_ _That you’re apathetic towards me?_

**Lance:** _No!_  
_No, I’m definitely not saying that!  
__Also wow apathetic. Low blow._

 **Keith:** _Agh oh my god_  
_Sorry I didn’t mean to  
__Ugh this isn’t going the way I planned_

**Lance:** _What DID you plan then_

**Keith:** _I wish I could talk to you face to face about this but I get the impression that it’d make you uncomfortable  
_ _And again I don’t want to pressure you into anything and sometimes texting just makes that easier_

**Lance:** _So technically I have the control here ‘cause I could stop talking whenever I wanted_

**Keith:** _Yeah, basically._

**Lance:** _And yet somehow I feel like this is just gonna turn into you insulting me  
_ _Apathetic?_

**Keith:** _You know what I meant._  
_Indifferent_  
_Disinterested  
__Do you want me to screenshot a thesaurus for you?_

**Lance:** _I’m not disinterested in you Keith  
_ _I do really like you and I like hanging out with you_

**Keith:** _Then what is it?_  
_Because you gave me the impression that you were interested at the bar  
__And then you just run away?_

**Lance:** _I know… I give off mixed signals a lot  
_ _It’s a bad habit from certain weird things I like to call ‘social constructs’ but we really don’t need to get into it._

**Keith:** _I want to_  
_I want to understand what’s going on inside your head?  
__‘Cause I mean, we don’t have much time together when you think about it_

**Lance:** _Yeah and it sucks D:  
_ _But honestly we have more time than you think_

**Keith:** _What makes you say that?  
_ _Aren’t you going to Belfast?_

**Lance:** _I was SUPPOSED to go…_

**Keith:** _What changed?_  
_Wait, are you staying in Dublin?  
__When did this happen?_

 **Lance:** _No need to be so excited ;)_  
_I actually have a procedure thing and it’s gloomy and bleh but I’ll be here for the time being.  
__Allura’s helping me figure out an airbnb thing ‘cause the recovery time is kind of ridiculous_

 **Keith:** _Procedure?_  
_Airbnb?_  
_Dude you could just ask me or Pidge  
__Guest bedrooms are a thing dumbass_

**Keith:** _(INCOMING CALL)_

 

 

Lance answered the phone laughing, “Wow, Eager Beaver, look at you.”

Keith let out an annoyed groan on the other end and said, “ _You’re really staying here? For how long?_ ”

“I don’t know… just whenever the doctor gives me the green light I guess,” Lance muttered. “I don’t really wanna talk about it.”

“ _Are ya sure?_ ” he asked, and added with a nervous laugh, “ _I mean… can’t be worse than a detached retina, can it?_ ”

Lance found himself twisting his fingers around the hotel bed comforter. _No… but the after effects will be horrendous…_ he thought to himself, throat closing up. 

“ _Can it?_ ” Keith asked again with more hesitancy. “ _God, Lance, what is it?_ ”

“It’s, ah… it’s a tumor… in my ear canal,” he all but whispered, sucking in his bottom lip. He saw Hunk move out of the corner of his eye. Hunk’s headphones were on and so he couldn’t hear the conversation. 

Lance hurriedly brushed his hands over his eyes as he listened to the usual spiel of, “Oh my God, I’m so sorry.”

“I don’t know much about whether or not the recovery’s worse than what you’ve got to go through, but… if it doesn’t turn out I’ll have to quit the orchestra, or at least be removed from first chair and I—First chair means _everything_ to me. I couldn’t give that up, you know? So I’m just… hoping for the best at this point. Maybe my hearing won’t be affected.”

“ _That’s awful. I don’t know what to say_ ,” Keith murmured, voice crackling over the phone. “ _How’d you… how’d you find out about it?_ ”

“Vertigo, actually. I’ve been having dizzy spells every once in a while ‘cause the tumor screws with your balance and stuff,” he explained, talking softly so Hunk couldn’t hear him over his music. “But, uh… yeah. Then I went in to the doctor, came out, ran into you on your moped and we got a drink together! So that was fun.”

“ _Sheesh, yeah, it looked like you needed a drink. Didn’t realize ya actually did._ ”

Lance burst into laughter, and as it subsided, they fell quiet for a moment longer before Lance asked, “Was that… offer to stay at your place for real? Because I would s _eriously_ consider it if it was.”

“ _Yeah, definitely. But I feel like… before we agree to anything that we have to talk about that whole shitshow I started over text. That was an asshole move I didn’t mean to—_ ”

“It’s fine. It’s fine. I get it from other guys I’ve been interested in,” Lance confessed, turning nervous all over again. “Listen, Keith…”

“ _Oh no. Is this where you say you’d rather just be friends?_ ” he sighed. “ _Because I honestly just don’t think…_ ”

“No, definitely not,” Lance insisted, pushing himself off of his bed. “Hang on, let me just… I’m hanging out with Hunk right now and I can’t tell if he’s eavesdropping on me or not.” To prove it, he squinted at Hunk, he went on humming under his breath as he scrolled through Tumblr on his phone. Lance passed him on his way to the door, grabbing his jacket and shoes as he went. 

The moment he closed the door, he said, “I honestly don’t know why I’m being so cryptic about this. It’s not that complicated, but it’s turned a bunch of other prospective relationships into bombs the second I mention it.”

“ _You’re not making this sound very promising. Would you want me to pick you up?_ ”

Lance worried his lip between his teeth as he considered the offer. On the one hand, Keith was right: phone calls and texts gave Lance the power to quit if the anxiety of it was too much. But on the other… face-to-face felt so much more genuine and real. He wanted this to work with Keith, and so the decision was clear.

“Would it be too much trouble?” he asked, and breathed a sigh of relief when Keith reassured him that it wouldn’t be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **L I N K S :**   
>  [amarukei](http://amarukei.tumblr.com/)   
>  [mistydragonflyart](http://mistydragonflyart.tumblr.com/)   
>  [girlskylark](http://girlskylark.tumblr.com/)


	3. Chapter 3

Lance stepped out underneath the awning next to the hotel lobby. It was dark all except for the lights overhead that made the streets look eerily dark in comparison. He waited for Keith’s one headlight to come into view, and then hoped it was Keith as it approached the parking lot. The moped turned, and glided up to the front where Lance was waiting, hands stuffed into his pockets to ward off the night chill.

Lance walked up to Keith with a shy smile. He looked down at his feet as they came in view of one another. Keith was wearing a pair of worn tan boots that mimicked the style of his baggy leather jacket. It was heavy and brown with tattered, elastic sleeve hems. By the looks of it, he threw it straight on over whatever lazy, cut-off shirt he’d been wearing when he called Lance. 

“You done checking me out?” Keith asked with a laugh. The comment colored Lance’s cheeks pink. Keith snickered and tipped his head to the side, “Get on. Unless you just wanna chat here.”

“I… don’t mind it here. Maybe we could walk down the street and back?” Lance suggested, and Keith agreed to it.

Together, they walked the moped to a parking spot where Keith kicked the stand out and pocketed the key. He let out a shaky breath, and it blossomed into a white cloud in the air. “So… what’s this ya wanted to talk about?” he asked, cheeks, nose, and ears still red from the ride. Before Lance could talk, though, he shook his head and backtracked, “Wait, before you say anything, do I require tissues because I didn’t bring any with me.”

“What? No, why would you need tissues.”

“In case it’s sad.”

“ _Keith_ , oh my _God_ ,” Lance laughed, “ _no_ , you don’t need tissues.”

Keith scowled at him and said, “Don’t laugh. I’m an easy crier on some occasions.”

“ _Some_ occasions?” he giggled, and tried his hardest to stop, but he couldn’t. He doubled over his knees laughing, and Keith just stood there with his arms folded over his chest and heaved an annoyed sigh. “S-Sorry, I just—”

“Are you quite done?” Keith huffed, and managed a smile once Lance insisted that he was. “Okay, good. Because I asked my mums about you using the guest room in the basement. We’ve got a bar down there so you’d get the fridge there, and there’s a telly and a couch so—”

“Wait, so did they say yes?” Lance asked, eyes wide. “But—hang on, they’re cool with…?” He gestured vaguely between the two of them, raising his eyebrows at Keith.

Keith gave an exasperated, confused look back. “They’re gay too, Lance. People are gay. What part of two moms didn’t you understand.”

“That is _so_ not what I was talking about—!”

“Then what’d ya mean by it?!”

“Just that… I dunno. My mom would have a hernia if I brought a boyfriend over to live at her house for a while,” Lance confessed, and sucked his breath in when he saw the way Keith stared at him for titling him like that. Lance put his hands in the air, and slapped them on his head with a shout. “Not that—! Oh God, this is a shitshow. Oh man…”

“So ya do see me as… potentially…?” Keith started, and Lance dared to peek between his fingers at Keith. The beautiful black haired man standing before him. The guy who almost ran him over on his moped and spoke in the most _ridiculously_ addicting accent Lance had ever _heard_. He could listen to Keith talk all day…

“I mean, yes…?” Lance squeaked, tucking his hands close to his mouth so he could stop himself at any time by covering his words up. “It’s a bit… more complicated than that, though.”

“How so?” Keith said, and that inquisitive tilt of his head had Lance’s heart racing.

“I’m… I’m ace, Keith,” Lance said and he didn’t even wait for the questions. He knew they’d come, they always did, and so he just charged onwards with, “It just means that my boundaries are a bit stricter than other guys you’ve probably dated and you don’t have to call me prude because I know I am and I don’t mean to be but things with sex just _really_ make me uncomfortable but I’m more lenient with romance like I can deal with hand holding but some things just get my adrenaline going and I can’t cope with it like—”

“Lance,” he interrupted softly, and Lance realized that every part of his face felt like it was on fire, and he was sure he was bright red when he looked up at Keith’s soft smile. “I know what being ace is. I’m not an idiot.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, that must mean a _lot_ of people are idiots then,” Lance said, and Keith burst into laughter. He clasped his gloved hand over his mouth to cover it up. Lance giggled and pushed his hands over his face, willing the heat to subside. “I’m… I’m so glad I told you. And you’re okay with it?”

“Yeah. I don’t mind taking things slow. Not— _shit,_ not that… I’m not trying to imply things will change, but you know what I mean, right?” Keith said, looking guilty for saying something like that.

Lance couldn’t help but laugh, though. Just seeing Keith flustered for once made Lance feel giddy. “Yeah, no, I know what you mean,” he reassured Keith. “Do you… Um, do you know any other people like that?”

Keith leant back against his moped seat and asked, “What, ace? Yeah, a few. I was actually surprised to find several in my classes. It’s cool that… not everyone has to conform, you know? Be pressured into things society pushes on us.”

Lance smiled at his feet and hummed, “Yeah, it is pretty cool.”

“Is that what you were talking about? About social constructs?”

“Yeah, it is. I… spent a _lot_ of my life—and I mean a _lot_ of it—convincing myself that I just needed to date people to figure this shit out before realizing that I didn’t need to figure… _anything_ out,” Lance explained, leaning against the opposite car so that the tips of their toes pushed against one another. He tugged his jacket hood over his head so that his ears were sheltered. “I just… ended up ruining a lot of friendships on the way. Because I was always closest to my friends and so if I… couldn’t get myself to like _strangers_ —aside from you, anyways—then I’d just have to test out relationships with friends.”

“Ooh, am I special?” Keith asked cheekily, and Lance kicked his shin, but laughed all the same. “Sorry, sorry. I guess I should stop with all that.”

“No, no, please don’t. Please? I mean, I like you because you’re _you_. I love your flirting,” Lance said quickly. “It’s funny.”

“ _Funny?_ ” Keith said indignantly, but whatever offense he felt vanished into a laugh. “I can’t _believe_ you!” he laughed.

Lance shook his head with a smile on his lips. It reflected how relieved he was that this conversation went as well as it had. 

They talked for a while longer out in the parking lot. They never ended up going on the walk Lance suggested because they were content facing one another over the yellow line separating Keith’s moped from the car Lance leant again. Keith explained the terms of living with his mums, and Lance was almost too thrilled to comprehend what it meant. He’d be living in a house for the first time in _months_ , perhaps even _years_ if he didn’t count the airbnbs Allura sometimes booked for shorter stays. He’d get a room to himself, there’d be a living room, there’d be a kitchen and basement. He’d get to do his laundry in the same vicinity. _He wouldn’t have to leave the house to do his laundry_.

“—And Elen owns a cat, but she’s super shy and doesn’t hang around much. So even if you are allergic, I don’t think you’ll even see her,” Keith finished.

“I’m not allergic. What’s her name?” he asked, and Keith got a weird look on his face. “What? What is it?”

“Her name is _Princess_ ,” he said, like the word was enough to render him ill with the stomach flu. “I love cats, don’t get me wrong, but when you name your pet something basic like _Patches_ or _Princess_ …”

“ _God_ , I know, I know someone who owns a dog named Spot. I’m pretty sure they named him ironically, but for Heaven’s sake, there’s so many names better suited for a dog.”

Keith laughed, and continued to laugh even when he tried to stop. Seeing Keith struggle like that was contagious, and soon Lance was giggling despite himself. Keith clasped a hand over his mouth and tried to tell him to stop, but neither one of them could. Lance snorted, and it made the entire situation worse. 

When they were calmer, Keith brushed his hands under his eyes. He checked them for tears before saying, “You know what? If you don’t mind me saying—it’s fucking corny.”

“What is it? Corny or not, I want to hear it.”

Keith glanced at him, as if gauging what level they were at now. He looked away, shaking his head. “Honestly… I was just going to say that you’re probably the fastest friend I’ve ever made. Usually it takes longer for me act like this around people.”

“ _Aw_ , does that mean I’m _special?_ ” Lance said jokingly, and earned a shove in the shoulder for it.

“Oh, shut up,” he laughed. “And, uh… when it comes to hiking? Mornings might be better.”

“Oh! Oh, right, I nearly forgot about that,” Lance said. “Thursday morning, maybe? I don’t have an evening show so I can just pass out straight after.”

“Yeah, that works. I’ll let Elena know,” Keith said. “And… I’ll talk to them about letting you stay with us.”

“Maybe do that… _after_ Thursday? Or at least wait to tell me. I don’t want to make things awkward if it doesn’t work out.”

Keith rolled his eyes, straightening up with his hands in his pockets. “Trust me, they’ll be fine with it. If anything, my mum just loves having guests around. She’ll be thrilled. If all else fails I’ll pull the ‘I’m an adult and I live here too’ card.”

“Please don’t—”

“I will.”

“Oh my God, Keith, listen to your moms for once…”

Keith laughed, and Lance’s smile resumed once more. “I’ll text you about what time we’re picking you up.”

“Okay,” Lance agreed, and when Keith lifted his arms, testing his boundaries, Lance let him know that he wasn’t crossing any lines. He tipped forward and accepted the hug, with his jitters and all. He let out a shaky breath against Keith’s jacket, and wondered if Keith could feel the delighted shiver that went through him. 

Lance left to head back inside. The thing about Happy, Giddy Lance was that he couldn’t control what his brain was thinking, and it usually ended up on some far away path that no one could really completely follow. It meant that he promptly forgot about his conversation with Keith aside from how happy it made him feel, and returned to the hotel room with another matter on his mind.

Hunk was lounging on the bed again, and sat up to the sound of Lance’s key opening the door. “Hey buddy—question for you,” Lance said, and his smile said it all.

“Oh no—”

“Let’s say we’re in battle,” Lance started, and Hunk turned over with a distressed moan. He reached for his phone to call for help, but Lance grabbed it before he could. “We’re in battle. Who do you think would win: a thousand chickens against one Spartan soldier.”

“Lance…” Hunk whined, “I’m tired I don’t have enough energy to argue with you over the chickens winning—”

Lance hesitated, and Hunk stopped and stared up at Lance. “Wait—you were gonna say the Spartan soldier wins,” he said.

“Well, _duh_ ,” Lance said.

“Oh my God, the chickens would totally win, dude.”

“Chickens don’t have swords and armor!”

“This is _one guy_ , Lance! You’re pitting _one guy_ against a thousand chickens—”

“How hard do you think it is to slice through a bunch of chickens? Not hard at all!” Lance exclaimed, lunging onto the bed where Hunk was already getting riled up for a fight. They were screaming before long, and their neighbor—Acxa—stormed over and hammered on the door until Lance opened it and yelled, “Tell Hunk that he’s completely mental!”

“Excuse me?” Acxa said, crossing her arms.

Hunk stood up, rubbing at his temples as he said, stressing every word, “Lance… thinks that… one Spartan soldier… would win against a fleet of a thousand chickens.”

A moment of silence passed as Acxa stared them both down, and then pegged Lance with one finger raised. She jabbed it into Lance’s shoulder and said, “ _You’re_ mental. A thousand chickens! You really think you could take on a thousand chickens!”

Lance gawked at her and said, “Excuse me, but _I_ am not a Spartan soldier. You know how badass they were?”

“They couldn’t take on a thousand chickens! Chickens have, like, talons and beaks!” she cried, and thus commenced an actual war.

 

 

 **Hunk** ADDED  **Acxa** , **Lance** ,  **Keith** , AND  **Pidge** TO THE GROUP CHAT.

**Hunk:** _I’m opening this up to discussion._

**Pidge:** _What the fuck is this_

**Lance:** _Pidge will see reason_

**Acxa:** _Who is Pidge_

**Pidge:** _I am Pidge_

**Acxa** : _Ah._

**Hunk** : _Okay LISTEN UP YOU FOOLS. Lance here thinks one Spartan soldier would win against an army of 1k chickens_

**Pidge** : _1k, you say_

**Hunk** : _yeah_

**Pidge** : _why 1k. let’s make this 10k_

**Hunk** : _Pidge no_

**Lance** : _now this is what I’m talkin about_

**Acxa:** _this isn’t a matter of quantity it’s a matter of Lance’s stupidity_

**Keith** : _ey no need for cheap shots_

**Lance** : _thank you, Keith_.

**Keith** : _that said, I really don’t agree with you Lance  
_ _The chickens would totally win_

**Lance** : _NOOOOO  
_ _CHICKENS DON’T HAVE SWORDS YOU ASSHAT_

**Acxa** : _I’d like to see you take on 10k chickens_

**Hunk** : _hey hey hey who said we agreed to bumping up the number to 10k_

**Pidge** : _I did_

**Keith** : _Me_

**Acxa** : _me_

**Lance** : _me :D_

**Hunk** : _Lance you’re ruining this for yourself._  
_chickens are absolute monsters you couldn’t survive a fleet of five chickens  
_ _NO. you couldn’t survive a fleet of one chicken_

**Acxa** : _that’s not a fleet, Hunk_

**Keith** : _sorry to intrude_  
_but  
_ _who’s this chick_

**Lance** : _Keith, meet Acxa Acxa this is Keith_

**Acxa** : _I’ll kick your ass if we are unable to convince Lance that he is a fool_

**Lance** : _HEY_

**Keith** : _deal_

**Hunk** : _Keith… I hate to say this buddy but…  
_ _you’re ruining this for yourself too_

**Lance** : _Acxa could maim you if she wanted_

**Keith** : _I’d like to see her try._

**Pidge** : _CAN WE PLEASE GET BACK TO THE CHICKEN DEBATE_  
_If you get an open wound from one of the chickens talons, you’re a goner  
_ _we all know chickens carry the bubonic plague_

 **Acxa** : _They do not  
_ _You’re blowing this out of proportions_

**Pidge** : _Lance blew this out of proportions the second he suggested he could fight 10k chickens_

**Lance** : _I literally never said that  
_ _I said one Spartan soldier could take on 1k chickens_

**Keith:** _It’s official Lance is fighting 10k chickens_

**Hunk** : _dear god_

**Lance:** _Ok as long as I have a sword I’ll be fine_

**Acxa:** _You know how hard it is to swing a sword dumbass_

**Keith:** _Hey, what’d I say about the cheap shots_

**Acxa** : _Who’s side are you even on_

**Lance** : _swords can’t be THAT difficult to swing_

**Pidge:** _You’re gonna be swinging it for a while with those 10k chickens my dude  
_ _better start swinging_

**Lance** : _I have upper body strength_

**Acxa** : _no you don’t_

**Hunk** : _sorry buddy but I agree with acxa on this_

**Lance** : _I could totally swing a sword  
_ _Is there a broom or something nearby_

**Acxa** : _Ask the cleaning staff_

**Pidge** : _Is he actually going to swing a broom around_

**Hunk** : _He just left the room_

**Keith** : _Lance no_

**Pidge** : _Jesus H Christ what is going on  
_ _Chickens are so evil how does he think he’s going to win this_

**Acxa** : _I can hear him running down the hall_

**Lance** : _I’M BACK.  
_ _I HAVE A BROOM._

**Pidge** : _Fine you gotta swing the broom for 15 min keep in mind this war is gonna take at least 6 hours_

**Acxa** : _At least?  
_ _Dude no he’s gotta strategize this shit he can’t just go ham all at once_

**Keith** : _Who’s side are you on_

**Acxa** : _Piss off_

**Hunk** : _HE’S PACING THE ROOM FLAILING THE BROOM AROUND LIKE A MADMAN_

**Pidge** : _receipt or it didn’t happen_

**Hunk** : _(SENT VIDEO)_

**Acxa** : _AAAAHAHAHAHAHA  
_ _O MY GOD_

**Pidge:** _(SAVED VIDEO)_  
_This is the purest bullshit I’ve ever seen  
_ _I never knew I needed this_

**Hunk:** _Oh my God  
_ _He says we’re fools for thinking chickens have talons_

**Pidge** : _Has he ever SEEN a chicken before  
_ _Show him a picture of one_

**Acxa:** _I already did and he thinks I photoshopped it_

**Hunk:** _Lance: I BET THEIR CLAWS AREN’T EVEN SHARP_

**Keith:** _I can’t deal with this shite  
_ _I’m leaving_

**Hunk:** _I’m sorry for ruining your perfect image of Lance_

**Pidge:** _PFFF_

**Acxa:** _This is horse shit I’m showing him a video  
_ _try telling me its photoshopped NOW LANCE_

**Hunk:** _huh._

**Pidge:** _What  
_ _What is it what happened_

**Acxa:** _I can’t…_

**Lance:** _So…  
_ _Apparently chickens can fly…_

**Keith:** _ARE YOU KIDDING ME_

**Pidge:** _You didn’t KNOW_

**Acxa:** _THIS IS PRICELESS_

**Pidge:** _I’M CRYING LANCE O MY GOD  
_ _YOU DIDN’T KNOW CHICKENS COULD FLY_

**Lance:** _I’m… reevaluating the situation  
_ _hang on_

**Acxa:** _AAAHAHAHHA_

**Pidge:** _LKADJF;ALKGA_

**Lance:** _I THOUGHT THEY WERE LIKE TURKEYS_

**Pidge** : _TURKEYS CAN FLY TOO_

**Lance:** _;laadj;akjga  
_ _I can’t fight something that’s taller than me_

**Hunk:** _You fought us_

**Acxa:** _a;ldkfja;lkdgja_

**Lance:** _PIDGE IS A MUNCHKIN AND KEITH IS THE SAME HEIGHT AS ME_

**Keith:** _Well…_

**Lance:** _DON’T YOU START WITH ME_

**Acxa:** _He’s getting defensive watch out  
_ _AH I HEAR HIM RUNNING DOWN THE HALL SAVE ME O MY GAKLDJFA;LKJD_

**Hunk** : _I COULDN’T STOP HIM I’M SORRY  
_ _I TRIED I TRULY DID_

**Pidge** : _Valiant effort_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **L I N K S :**   
>  [amarukei](http://amarukei.tumblr.com/)   
>  [mistydragonflyart](http://mistydragonflyart.tumblr.com/)   
>  [girlskylark](http://girlskylark.tumblr.com/)


	4. Chapter 4

“So… chickens, huh?” Keith said the moment Lance dropped into the back seat of his mom’s car. 

Lance groaned and tried to articulate his thoughts, but he was too furious to do so. He slammed the door shut and took a moment to gather the words in his mouth. When he spoke, he spoke calmly, “I… thought they were like _penguins_.”

“Penguins, huh?” 

“Like… they’re birds but they can’t fly…”

“Yeah, I know what penguins are.”

“Buckle up back there,” Keith’s mom said, and turned around in the passenger’s seat to beam at Lance. “Nice to finally meet you, Lance!”

“Nice to meet you, too, Miss Kogane,” Lance said, and she settled back in her seat with a smug look on her face. 

Her girlfriend rolled her eyes before looking back at Lance to say, “Calling her “Miss Kogane’ gives her an ego boost.”

“No it doesn’t! I love it,” Keith’s mom said, pouting jokingly. “You can call me Miss Kogane and that’s fine by me.”

“Looks like I’m calling her ‘Miss Kogane’ from now on,” Lance declared, grinning at Keith, who bit back a smile and turned to look out the window instead. “So Elena—you’ve been organizing this whole thing. Where are we going today?”

“That ruins the surprise, doesn’t it?” she said, her posh British lilt turning into Lance’s favorite sound in the whole world. He never ceased to swoon whenever he heard British accents.

Lance noted that Keith was pulling out his phone, and in the next moment, Lance’s phone buzzed in his coat pocket. He was wearing one of those blue windbreakers over his coziest sweater, and he hoped that would be enough to ward off the chilly ocean breeze. He pulled his phone out and opened Keith’s message with a sneaky glance towards the guy. Keith raised his eyebrows at Lance and looked out the window.

 

**Keith:** _Glad you survived  
_ _Meeting my moms, I mean_

**Lance:** _I love them  
_ _I give them both gold stars._

 

“Lance says he gives you both gold stars,” Keith said, and Lance all but threw his phone on his lap as Miss Kogane let out an excited little shout and nudged Elena. Lance gave Keith a look that said, “ _Snitches get stitches_.”

“We were thinking about stopping for coffee before heading out,” Miss Kogane said. “We’d be happy to get you something, Lance—drinks on us.”

“Oh! Um, no, I can pay—”

“No, really, especially when you unofficially invited us to your performance. It’s the least we can do in return.”

“Honestly, it’s fine—and the invite is totally official,” Lance insisted, ducking his head into his scarf as Miss Kogane turned to smile at him. She and Keith had the same exact face, and all that really changed was the light makeup she wore. She hardly looked a day over twenty-five. “My friends at the Symphony, Hunk and Acxa, agreed to use their two tickets for you guys.”

“Aw! That’s sweet of them—”

“We should’ve taken them to coffee too,” Elena commented, and Keith rolled his eyes when his mom agreed. 

They wound up at the Holt’s cafe—big surprise there—and it was the second day in a row that Lance went there. The day before, another guy was working and so Hunk didn’t get the chance to chat with Pidge, but now they were graced with both of the Holts working that early Thursday morning. 

“We heard you came by yesterday, Lance,” Pidge commented as she pulled a shot of espresso and blew on the top of it. She brushed off the stray bits before securing it onto the machine.

“Oh, yeah, Hunk and I stopped by. We were doing some quick shopping because I didn’t have any shoes acceptable for hiking,” he explained, and displayed his new shoes by kicking his leg up as far as it went. Keith ducked out of the way to avoid getting hit, and promptly held Lance’s leg in place.

“New shoes?” Keith commented, raising an eyebrow at Lance. The question sounded… worrisome.

“Yeah, why?” Lance said, dropping his foot.

“You’re supposed to break them in before going on a hike,” Pidge said.

“I don’t think—well, it won’t be an _intense_ hike,” Keith insisted. “I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

Lance frowned at them both, and then at his new shoes. They felt comfortable enough, and he walked in them all the day before during and after practice. He gave his ankles an experimental roll before swaying on his heels. He perched on the tips of his toes, and Keith crossed his arms, a solid few inches shorter now. 

With their beverages all made up, they left the cafe and hurried to the car so that they could make it to the hiking trail by eight. Sunrise passed several hours before, but its colors were still fresh on the clouds. Lance sipped on his spicy chai and felt it warm every bit of his limbs by the time they drove past the nature park sign. As they all stepped out of the car, Lance hurriedly chugged the rest of his drink so that he could toss it in the nearest trashcan. 

Keith walked up to him from across the parking lot as Elena and Miss Kogane tracked down their path on the park map.

“I hope ya don’t mind me taking pictures of you,” he said, and Lance shrugged and reassured him that it was fine. “Okay, good, because I have a fuckton of pictures to take for my final. I had to whip an idea out of my ass before my surgery and figured it was just dumb luck that we bumped into each other.”

“What’s the idea?” Lance asked, and looked over at Keith’s moms as they told them to hurry it up. _God_ , did they look like a power couple or what. Elena looked like one of those famous Instagramers who ran a health blog on the side, and Miss Kogane looked so incredibly adorable with her heavy-duty backpack stuffed with snacks for later, and a first aid kit that she explicitly said was for any scenario involving any of them getting injured. As if it was inevitable.

Keith and Lance hurried after them over a wooden walkway that passed over a bog. A thin, wispy layer of fog gathered at their feet and through the cattails. “I was thinkin’ about… well, it might be easier to do this in a studio, but I like natural like more than anything, an’ studio photography isn’t all that fun for subjects so—”

“Well, what is it?”

“Just… a documentary sequence of finding a new friend—potential ‘significant other.’” He added the end fast, and went on talking even though Lance’s brain stuck to the phrase and stayed there until catching the tail end of Keith saying, “—I figured once my recovery is less intense, I’ll be able to edit all the pictures in time for the actual deadline.”

“Oh,” Lance said, and found himself smiling giddily, hiding it behind his scarf. “Yeah, that sounds good to me.”

“But you know what documentary photography is, right?”

“Like… real life?”

“Yeah, and it can be candid or not, so don’t be surprised if I randomly take pictures of you when you aren’t ready,” Keith said, and Lance was suddenly grateful that he decided to take a shower that morning. He hoped he wouldn’t look too dreadful out-of-context.

They walked a great distance through the fog. The air was cool and settled on Lance’s skin like a thin, velvety layer that reminded him that where he was happened to both near and far from what he used to call home. The temperature and the air felt almost identical to Oregon from what he could remember, but perhaps his mind was just as cloudy as the sky once the morning began to lift. 

They reached the forests and began the climb upwards. The first time Keith stopped Lance in the path was just near the edge of the bog where he gently positioned Lance where the boardwalk stretched on behind him, and faded into the grey. Lance stared out past Keith’s crouched fingure to where his moms paused on the forest path and waved to him. Lance amiably waved back, just as he heard the camera click.

“Oh! Sorry, I got distracted,” Lance blurted out. “Try it again?”

“No, it was perfect—let’s keep going,” Keith insisted, tugging Lance by the sleeve to keep him on track.

They talked about hobbies they had outside of work. Lance couldn’t say “music” or else he’d be as redundant as Keith saying “reading” or “photography.” So instead, they bonded over video games, and out of earshot from Keith’s parents, they conspired over what to play during their recoveries. 

“I vote _Last Of Us_ ,” Keith said.

“What? No way, no horror—”

“Most video games _are_ horror—”

“ _No_. Why can’t we play, like, _Animal Crossing_?”

“Are you fucking serious right now? We are _not_ playing _Animal Crossing_. I don’t even own the system for that.”

Lance bit his lip and acted innocent until Keith pestered him by saying, “ _Please_ tell me you don’t own a DS.”

He giggled to himself nervously before saying, guiltily, “When I’m not knitting during travel… I like to play Super Mario games…”

“You are an absolute fuckin’ maggot.”

“A maggot? Really? Cheap shot.”

“Oi, I’m the one calling cheap shots, and this isn’t cheap,” Keith insisted, and dropped his voice to a low, threatening hiss. “One minute you’re tellin’ me you love _Skyrim_ and then you’re saying you’d rather dick around with furries on _Animal Crossing_. I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

Lance was too appalled to say anything for a solid minute before bursting out into a fit of giggles. Keith shoved him in the arm and griped and groaned about Lance playing kids’ games. “To be fair, though, I travel constantly! You think I’m gonna stick a PS4 into my suitcase? Hell no. My DS is mobile as fuck.”

“ _Boys!_ Hurry up!” Elena shouted from up the trail. Lance looked up and groaned at the sight of the steep stone steps carved between tree roots covered in moss. Miss Kogane waved at them from the top, and Lance offered a not-so-eager wave in return.

Lance pressed a hand to his aching chest and turned to Keith, saying, “How long have we been hiking?”

“Thirty minutes.”

“Are you _kidding me?_ ” he moaned, and insisted Keith go up first because Lance would take at least another half hour just to climb these stairs.

Each step Lance climbed made his thighs feel half a centimeter bigger than they were before. By the top of the steps, his legs were throbbing, but at least he felt buffer than he was several dozen feet below. He took a second to catch his breath as Keith crossed his ankle over his knee from where he sat, waiting on one of the park benches. Once recovered, Lance posed in a half-lunge and flexed his biceps.

“Impeccable,” Keith said. 

“Okay, to be fair though, I’m part of the string section, not the wind. I don’t have to depend on respiratory exercises.”

“Are you saying that… being a part of the string section means that you have upper body strength? Is that… what you’re saying?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Uh-huh, and is this the same upper body strength that couldn’t swing a broom for fifteen minutes—”

“ _Keith!_ So mean!” Lance cried, and he laughed despite the fire burning in his chest. It didn’t fade, mostly because when Keith stood up, he flung his arm over Lance’s shoulders and guided him along back onto the trail. Lance suddenly felt lighter, like he did after hopping off of a bike after a long, hellish ride.

Keith dropped his arm after a few seconds, and went along walking beside Lance from the other edge of the path. Lance looked down, grinning like an idiot, and wondered how it’d feel to hold Keith’s hand—just once. But then he remembered that his hands were clammy from the hike, and that they were hiking with Keith’s parents… In the end, holding hands just wasn’t appealing anymore. The luster faded fast.

The camera clicked.

“You looked pensive,” Keith explained.

“Big word.”

“For what? An actual college student?” Keith snorted, flitting back on his camera’s memory for a moment before looking up, and then cursing under his breath. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have worded it like that—”

“Like what?” Lance asked, and then realized belatedly, that he was meant to be embarrassed. “Oh. Um, no, it’s fine.”

“It isn’t. It was—”

“Cheap shot,” Lance offered, and grinned when Keith stared at him in horror. He couldn’t help himself—he never expected to find Keith looking _guilty_. The man seemed beyond guilt with that sort of confidence. Lance burst into laugher, and sidled over to give Keith a nudge. Keith looked away to sigh and try to repeal the comment. Lance nudged him again, this time closer to his wrist, and used his split second of courage to take Keith’s hand in his own.

Keith took a picture of it.

“Are you kidding me? Did you just take a picture of us holding hands?” Lance blurted out, and quickly took his hand back and ran ahead. He even forgot to feel tired from the climb up the cliff, because soon, Keith was chasing him with evidence of them holding hands. “Get that foul slander away from me!” Lance would shout, and ran so far that he caught up with Miss Kogane and Elena.

“Lance?” Elena said, and squeaked when Keith bolted past her with his camera held high in the air. They were on the cliffs beyond the trees, and so they were teetering on the slim trail that skirted the bluffs. Lance ran through the grass to avoid tipping off the cliff, his yelling nothing more than complete gibberish at this point. Keith beat him to the peak, reassuring Lance that he wasn’t, in fact, going to get tackled.

Keith held the camera up to the ocean, yelling, “ _I have evidence!_ ”

Lance walked, panting, up beside him. Even though he’d been running, his arms were suddenly tired, and lifting them as high as Keith’s was a struggle at best. “ _Evidence!_ ” he shouted.

“Do that again,” Keith demanded, and Lance recognized the tone, knowing that in the next moment, Keith would be taking a picture of him yelling, “ _EVIDENCE!_ ” at the ocean. 

Lance probably looked deranged, and when Keith was later forced to show the pictures to Miss Kogane and Elena, Elena would say, “You’ve captured an absolute madman in his prime.” Lance would relay this to Hunk, who would relay this to Pidge, who, on their next outing to the cafe, would write on his togo cup, “ _An absolute madman (in his prime)_.” The highest of compliments, truly.

Though, when it came time for Keith to upload and show off these pictures, he refused to look at them himself. “I’m waiting until after the surgery. It’ll give me something to do when I’m otherwise bedridden.”

“You won’t be able to move your eye, though,” Lance insisted.

“It’s just a computer screen. My eye doesn’t have to travel that far,” Keith said, twiddling his finger around like they were his eyes, scanning the screen. He folded his arms from where he stood in his mom’s kitchen, back to his laptop sitting on the counter. His mom was still skimming through the photos, and shook Elena’s arm eagerly at the sight of yet another photograph of the two of them. Evidently, they had thousands ever since Keith started taking photographs of them. 

“Speaking of—Lance, what would you say to an evening performance on Sunday?” Elena suggested. “It will… keep our minds off things.”

“Oh! Yeah, sure, I can get you all your tickets before then,” Lance reassured. “Keith and I will probably hang out before then anyways.”

“Will we?” Keith questioned, surprised. “But you work—”

“Not in the mornings.”

“Still, you’ve got to be tired then—”

“So what? I might not get to see you after—”

“Of course you will. You’re staying with us, aren’t you?” Miss Kogane said, and suddenly looked worried when she caught sight of Lance’s surprise. “Oh, was I not supposed to say anything?” she asked, biting her thumbnail as she looked at her son.

Lance looked at Keith, and Keith looked at him, suddenly guilty. “I _might_ have already mentioned it to them…” he confessed. 

“Oh,” Lance all but squeaked. It was impossible to ignore the fact that he could hear his blood rushing in his ears, and it made him lightheaded. And dizzy. And— _shit_. “Whoa, okay, mind if I, uh, use a chair real quick—”

He broke off, already lunging for the dining table before he could start to feel like the world was tipping him backwards. He collapsed onto the seat, and his paranoia sent his hand to his ear. 

“Whoa, you okay? You look kinda freaked right now,” Keith said, crouching down beside him. 

“I’m fine—the whole, dizzy thing just hit me,” he explained, gesturing to his defective ear canal. His cheeks flushed with embarrassment, and he quickly apologized for making it seem like he was overreacting about the situation they were talking about.

Miss Kogane pulled out the chair beside Lance and sat in front of him. “It’s fine, sweetie—Keith told us about the tumor. Let us know if there’s anything you need alright?”

Lance nodded mutely, and offered a tense smile before swallowing down his worries and clearing his throat. “Okay. I just—I hate to bother you two, especially with Keith’s surgery coming up—”

“The first few nights will be rough, but by the time your surgery comes around, Keith won’t need us breathing down his neck,” Elena said from the kitchen counter. “And there’s two of us here—one for each of you.”

Keith scoffed, rolling his eyes. Lance would have laughed, too, if he didn’t feel so relieved by the sentiment. And here he thought he’d be dealing with this all on his own despite all of his doctor’s precautions to have someone there in case he’d be in need of assistance. He hoped it didn’t look like he was a blink away from tearing up.

“That means a lot—thank you,” he said.

Shortly after, Miss Kogane got Lance a glass of water and showed him the guest bedroom in the basement. The rooms were all cozy and filled with knickknacks and structured color schemes. Lance could tell that the house was older just based on the room arrangements—they were all separate. There was no combined living room-kitchen setup. The stairs to the second floor were hidden behind a door, as were the stairs to the basement. They were narrow, and curved to the small sitting area where a flatscreen television took up an entire wall above where a collection of DVDs sat beside Keith’s gaming systems. 

Lance recognized the fireplace in the position directly below where the living room was upstairs. It was small and squarish, and as they stepped into the guest bedroom, Lance was excited to find that it was open to this room as well. They had a fireplace in their guest bedroom. 

“I know it’s a bit small, but I hope it’ll suffice,” Miss Kogane said. “And there’s a little bar area off of the basement living room—you can fill the refrigerator with whatever you like.”

“This is… this is actually really incredible,” Lance confessed, all smiles as he looked at her. “ _Really_. I’m just so glad that I have a place to stay with people who’ll make sure I don’t, you know, die or whatever.”

She laughed and squeezed his shoulder. As she guided him out of the room, she gave him a gentle pat on the back and said, “Well, I’m glad we could help out. I’m glad you met my son—he seems to’ve taken a liking to you, and I can see why. You’re an awfully successful man for your age. The Altea Symphony!”

Lance laughed and followed after her, despite how much it pained him to think about it. To think that he’d have to _retire_ when he was barely past the start of his career. 

Some might call that tragic.

 

* * *

 

 

Keith couldn’t remember the last time he _dressed up_ for an event. He gave up on appearances a _long_ time ago, and so he never thought to wear one of the few suits he owned. He never considered himself “classy,” and so it’d be a stretch to say that even his suits were. Whenever he wore them, he felt more like a snooty professor more so than he did a professional of some kind. He wasn’t a professional of _anything_ , really, so making appearances felt more like fraud these days.

He wore a light gray suit tailored accordingly after much fuss with his mum insisting that he get it fitted right. That was years ago, and he grew a tad since then, so now he didn’t bother buttoning the front in fear of it not being able to button at all. He tucked his undershirt sleeves forward, layering it beneath the suit jacket, and sighed. 

“Well, don’t you look posh,” Elena said from the doorway. Keith looked at her and then at his reflection unconvincingly. “Come here—please tell me you’re wearing a tie.”

“I wasn’t _planning_ on it—”

“Well, what have you got?”

“Like, _two—_ ”

“You have more than that! I know your grandmum gives you plenty,” she snapped, hurrying to his closet before he could tell her to stop it, and that he’d go as is. He was already wearing a ridiculous pair of maroon-ish pants—he didn’t need to stand out by wearing a _tie_.

Elena lassoed him in, though, and wrapped a tie around his neck. She tied it for him and flattened it out over his chest. He looked away with a sigh as she fixed the collar and gave him two pats on the shoulder. “Perfect. _Gosh_ , look at _you_!”

“You’re being oddly enthusiastic…”

“It’s not every night we get to go to an orchestra. I love theaters,” she confessed, sticking her nose in the air. “I love all the sculptures and the architecture.”

“I’m sure you do,” Keith said, but laughed all the same and went to fetch his shoes. Elena was already in her heels, and was likely waiting on both him and his mum. _Figures_. 

They left the house just in time to feel like assholes trying to nudge their way between strangers knees and the row of seats in front of them. The lights dimmed abruptly after Keith collapsed in his seat and cleaned the fog out of his glasses so that he could actually see the performance. 

Keith had never met Allura, but from all of Lance’s descriptions of her, it was easy to see that she lived up to all of the expectations. She walked onto the stage the moment the curtains lifted, and walked directly through Keith’s line of view of Lance. All of the musicians stood. She stole his attention, drawing the focus of the audience to the raised podium. The audience let loose a tremendous wave of clapping from the moment she emerged, to the moment reached the first row of violinists, and even after. She shook the First Chair’s hand—Lance—and then the woman beside him, who Keith recognized at Acxa from the fact that she added him on almost… _all_ the social media he and Lance were connected on.

Allura bowed to the audience and turned her back to the people. Her hair was pure white, and wrapped up into a tight, neat bun that displayed her looped earrings, and exposed the collar of her suit.

[She raised her hands, and began.](https://youtu.be/rOjHhS5MtvA?t=1m37s)

It began with a gentle climb, and the acoustics in the theatre had chills coursing down Keith’s spine. As the ascent reached a crashing thunder, Keith was reminded of why he was here to begin with—he looked for Hunk among the cellos, and after Lance went through his thorough catalogue of musicians in his orchestra (fully equipped with character profiles of each and every one of them), Keith was able to recognize several others, including a woman named Zethrid, Ezor, and two men who went by Ulaz and Thace.

And then, his attention returned to Lance.

All of the violinists bows raised as one as the tension lifted. They were close enough to see how Lance’s eyes closed to the music, before opening his complete focus to the gesture of Allura’s hand stretching towards the row behind him. The violinists there began a quivering trill that was pulled into Lance’s row with subtle force. The vibration of the rhythm seemed to whisper through the dome of the theatre, curling around them to where it settled on Keith, who looked at his mum, who then looked at Elena, who whispered, “What are you looking at me for?”

Elena was right about one thing: Going to Lance’s performance certainly took their mind off of the fact that after this, Keith would go home and administer dilation drops to his bad eye in preparation for his surgery in the morning. And after the performance, they’d wait out in the atrium for Lance to find them, and drag them back to where all of the performers were gathered and talking to guests from the audience. He’d rapidly introduce them to his friends and fellow musicians, and Keith would shake more hands than he could count before landing in a conversation with Hunk. And after, they’d try to get Keith to go out for drinks, but alas, he couldn’t.

“No alcohol for this one,” Miss Kogane would say, and then they’d be reminded of the surgery in the morning, and insist on leaving.

Lance wound up following them out through the parking lot exit, saying, “Well, I’ll see you later, because this whole surgery thing is definitely gonna work and you’ll actually be able to see me properly after.”

Keith laughed, “Yeah, sure, as soon as I don’t hafta wear a fuckin’ eyepatch that’s for sure.”

Lance grinned at him, and wiggled around for a moment, debating whether or not to hug Keith. There wasn’t any harm in it, so he lunged forward and wrapped Keith up in a tight hug. “You’ll be fine, okay?”

“Yeah, of course I will be,” Keith said. “And you were incredible tonight. I’m so glad we came.”

“Ah! Me too! That was fun,” he said, and was then pulled aside by Keith’s mum for another hug.

After they separated, she said, “Now, when are you going to be coming by? Tonight’s your last night, right?”

“Yes! It is, and so my crew is leaving tomorrow evening. Allura will drop me off before they go, so don’t you worry about me.”

“Perfect—we’ll see you then, Lance,” she said, and kissed him on the cheek. He beamed at her, and then at Keith, who nudged him on the shoulder before walking off with Elena and his mum. 

Lance yelled, “Good luck!” after them before hurrying back inside. His performance suit wasn’t exactly _warm_ , anyways, and so he was grateful to be back inside where he could feel his fingers again. As Lance went off in search of Hunk, Keith went home and pulled his glasses off in front of his bathroom mirror. He tipped his head back and administered a drop of the dilation fluid, and closed his eyes against the fiery sting. He just had to make it through the morning. He could do this. 

 

* * *

 

Keith counted down from ten for the anesthesiologist, but he didn’t get past eight. He closed his eyes, and laid there on the bed with an “X” marked above his bad eye. They wheeled him out of the room where Miss Kogane would wait while Elena was instructed to stay out in the waiting room for the two hours the surgery would take.

He woke up at some point after everything, knowing that something had happened, but his head felt like nothing. He could hardly open his good eye in the dark room where a nurse stood beside him. They were on the other side of two closed doors when a heavy weight started to lull him back to sleep, like a magnet holding his head to the pillows before he was able to fully wake again in another room, at another time, and with his mum standing beside him instead.

“—Remember that no matter when or why he wakes up in the night, have him eat something and take a Vicodin. Don’t let him have one on an empty stomach—bread should do fine and remember that with the gauze you have to—” 

—His mum was helping him out of the wheelchair. They were at the exit, and the overcast outside was so incredibly _bright_. All the clouds were white, and acted like the reflectors in the photography studios—expanding the light so that it laid evenly over the parking lot they walked across. Elena started the car as he settled in the back.

“Don’t lay on your bad side—the pressure could make your eye pop like a grape,” his mum said.

“Wow, excellent imagery,” Elena commented. 

“Grapes?” Keith said. “Can I have a grape—”

“You can eat something when we get home. Elena can grab us some grapes—”

“I can? I mean, of course I can,” she said, and Keith closed his eye and realized that his other eye wasn’t functioning at all. It felt like that entire side of his face was just… _gone_ , and that his mouth slanted where the numbing medication pulled at his cheeks. He remembered, then, how the nurse put numbing eye drops in his eye, and it made his eye feel like a cotton ball.

He reached a hand up to the bandages as his mum buckled him in. He plucked at the gauze taping the padding to his face. “No, no, leave it, hun,” his mum said, holding his hand down. “We’ll change the wrappings tonight. It might be a bit itchy once you start to feel it.”

“My eye doesn’t exist…”

His mum smiled weakly and pat his knee. “Don’t worry about it. Let’s get you home.”

Once the door was closed, he tipped his good side against the window and fell asleep. He didn’t wake up until they were home, and he had to walk to the couch where he collapsed for the day. He stared at the ceiling for a while until Elena came into the house. An entire hour had passed, and she went grocery shopping for bread and grapes, and other snacks. He couldn’t open his jaw all that much because of the gauze immobilizing his left cheek, so she gave him some juice through a straw, and then a bowl of oatmeal.

He fell asleep for the rest of the day before he thought to even check his phone. He nudged it out of his coat that was lying over the couch cushion, and tried to focus his eye on it. A sharp needle stuck through his bad eye. 

“Ouch,” he moaned, clasping a hand over the gauze. He held the phone closer, but he could read a single word without having to move his eye to the next. “ _Shit_ ,” he hissed, tipping his head back and abandoning the effort. So no reading. Great.

“What is it?” his mum called out from the other room. 

“Nothing,” he said, and had to clear his throat. “I just felt something. It’s fine.”

It wasn’t fine. He figured it was just because he tried to read something, but the stinging came back, and it persisted. It started as individual jabs before feeling like his eye was a football, squeezed into the socket and inflated. His eye started to water without his consent, and he stood up to get the pain medication himself.

Elena was sitting at the kitchen counter when Keith came in, tears streaking his cheek. His face felt hot and sticky. “Pain killers,” he said. 

She opened the pill bottle and handed it to him along with a water bottle with a straw. He kept his eye closed at all times so that the motion of turning his head wouldn’t cause his eyes to go crazy trying to stay straight. He never even realized that his eyes moved at all when he turned his head. As he swallowed the pill, he decided that he’d just have to be an owl for a while, unable to look anywhere but forwards. 

He was asleep in the couch when Lance arrived later that evening. He was sleepy from the drugs and woozy from the numbing medication, and so when he finally did come to, he was delirious. 

“It hurts,” he told Lance, even though he couldn’t feel anything.

“Do you need medicine?” Lance asked as Keith closed his eyes and shook his head. “You’re tearing up—hang on—” Lance swiped a tissue out of the box on the coffee table and pressed it under Keith’s good eye.

Lance stood up from the couch afterwards to toss the tissue out. Keith went back to his sleeping position. He looked almost like a corpse with how his hands were clasped over his stomach, and his face was positioned upwards. He looked pathetic with his bulky white bandage over his eye. When Lance came back, Keith was trying to sit up. 

“What’s up?” Lance asked. “Are you hungry? It’s almost nine.”

“No—I want to use my phone… but I can’t…”

“What do you want on it?” he asked, curling up on the couch beside Keith so that Keith could use him as support. Keith mumbled his answer as Lance picked up the phone from between the cracks in the couch cushions. “Password?” he asked, and Keith gave it to him, and then quietly directed him to his audiobook library.

They listened to _The Martian_ , though Lance was positive that Keith wouldn’t retain a single word of it. Keith fell asleep again, and so Lance turned off the audio book after chapter three and decided that there wouldn’t be much to do with Keith tonight. He helped Miss Kogane get Keith up to his bed on the second floor and asked if she needed anything else.

“Yes, actually—could you see if Elena managed to find the cowbell?” she asked, and Lance agreed to it even as he left the room with a confused look on his face.

He found Elena digging around in the storage room in the basement. “Miss Kogane says that you’re… looking for a cowbell?” he said.

“Yes! I am, would you mind rooting through… this box here for me?” she asked, passing him a plastic container. He popped the lid on it as Elena explained, “It’s for tonight so that Keith doesn’t have to get out of bed if he wakes up. He’ll just ring the bell and we can get him whatever he needs.”

“Ah, that’s smart,” Lance said.

“We’ll do the same for you if it comes to that—eventually Keith won’t need to use it,” she said, and looked over a stack of boxes to smile at him. “I’ve been doing some research on acoustic neuromas, and it sounds like you’ll be on painkillers for a month?”

“Yeah, something like that,” he sighed. He never _usually_ had to take painkillers, and pills made him nervous. 

He unfolded a few stacks of crinkled paper, and held them up with an eyebrow raised. It looked like… a race number? Perhaps from a marathon. Lance laid it back down with some makeshift signs. Something clanked around at the bottom, and it was a string of bells tipping against… _cowbells_.

“Hey! I found them!” he cried, lifting them up. Elena shouted in excitement, and hurried around the boxes to grab them.

“Perfect! Now let’s head up—this room gives me the creeps,” she said, pulling Lance by the sleeve out of there. She shut off the light with a shudder, and closed the door.

Keith was emerging from the bathroom when they arrived on the second floor. He looked more or less like a zombie with that patch on his eye, and the slump in his shoulders. He blinked slowly at them as they approached, and seemed to forget that Lance was even there. “Lance?” he said, surprised, as Elena pressed the cowbell into his hand.

“Your mum wanted me to give you this—if you wake up in the middle of the night, ring this, okay?” she said, and Keith quietly agreed. He retreated to his room after giving Lance another strange look. Elena laughed, crossing her arms and saying, “I don’t think he realizes that you’re sticking around tonight.”

“I’m not surprised—he’s been half-asleep all day,” Lance said. Together, they stood outside of Keith’s bedroom and tipped their heads to the side as they watched Keith crawl into bed. Miss Kogane was already there with sleep medicine, and a Vicodin to hold him over for the next several hours. She unzipped a baggie and started lining up the eyedrops she’d have to administer once she took off the bandages and changed them for the night.

Lance retreated to his room not long after that, and settled into his bed with his laptop so that he could FaceTime Hunk—he already missed the guy, it was ridiculous. They hadn’t spent more than a day apart ever since they joined the Symphony, and Lance figured he’d be relieved to have some time to himself, but… he was so dependent on the crew. 

Hunk and the others were still on the train nearing Belfast, and Hunk wandered down the aisle to show his face to everyone in that section of the train. Some were asleep, and so Hunk skipped them as Lance giggled from underneath his plaid quilt. He had the fireplace on, and it was the only source of light in that cozy little room Lance would spend his recovery in. 

“So… how’s Keith?” Hunk asked as he settled back into his seat. He was caught in the halo of the light on over his head—the only one on in the cabin. 

“Keith is… Keith is fine,” he said. “Makes me kinda worried for my recovery…”

“Aw, don’t be worried, Lance,” Hunk cooed, “it’ll be fine.”

“Yeah… Keith has that whole eyepatch thing going on… his mom changed his bandage and put him to bed just a little bit ago,” he said, yawning. Sleep sounded good. 

They talked a bit longer, and Hunk entertained Lance’s ramblings about how cute Keith looked earlier when he fell asleep during the audiobook. Keith, the guy who looked so tough in his leather jacket and bought Lance a drink at a pub in downtown Dublin. Who knew that same man would look so docile? Granted… he just had stitches laced through his _eyes_ …

They talked until all their sentences were separated by yawns, and Lance said, “I should probably sleep now… I’ll talk to you later?”

“Yeah, sounds good,” Hunk said, smiling sleepily into the camera. “Miss you, love you.”

“Miss you, love you,” Lance hummed, and quietly nestled into the pillows as he hung up and set his phone aside. 

Tomorrow would be another day, and his first full day with the Koganes. He was determined to make the best of it, and he couldn’t do that if he was just as sleepy as Keith was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Adi's art for this chapter :D](http://mistydragonflyart.tumblr.com/post/169189772037/my-piece-for-girlskylark-s-beautiful-fic-about)
> 
> **L I N K S :**   
>  [amarukei](http://amarukei.tumblr.com/)   
>  [mistydragonflyart](http://mistydragonflyart.tumblr.com/)   
>  [girlskylark](http://girlskylark.tumblr.com/)


	5. Chapter 5

Lance’s morning was calm up until the moment he decided to emerge from the basement. As he came up the curve of the stairs, Keith was busy clutching to the railing heading down to the first floor. They both turned into the living room at the same time, and Keith looked more or less drunk trying not to open his eye too much. If he looked at a moving object, it was a sure-fire way to bring back the needle pricks.

“Hey there Pirate Keith,” Lance said, saluting him.

“Piss off, you fuckin’ gobshite. I feel like shit beaten up in a bucket where’s my mum,” Keith all but slurred, and it took everything in Lance’s power to keep from giggling up a storm. He never thought he’d be sworn at by a man with a true Irish accent, but here he was, being called a spot of chewing tobacco.

“I don’t know—do you need your meds or—”

“Yes, God yes, where is it I can’t see for shite.”

“Are you always this cranky in the morning.”

“Don’t fuckin’ start with me,” Keith sighed, and let Lance take him by the arm and guide him into the kitchen where he last saw Elena fetching medicine from Keith’s pain killers collection. There was a note written next to it, for Elena, that said, “Advil if Keith is feeling better.” Lance looked at Keith then, and realized that he didn’t blame Keith for being pissy—last night, Lance heard the cowbell go off twice, but he wasn’t exactly the one feeding Keith bread while his eyes started to water before the pain even set in. 

Lance sat Keith down at the kitchen table. Keith grunted, holding a hand over his eye and saying, “Feels like someone’s kickin’ me in the eye socket. Jesus H. Christ…”

“Hang in there—here, eat this,” Lance demanded, stuffing a slice of French bread against Keith’s hand. He slid a glass of orange juice onto the table, and as a second thought, stuck a straw in it. After Keith finished the bread, Lance handed him a pill before offering to go find his mom. 

Lance hurried out of the room, and bolted up the stairs. He hesitated on the second floor—sure, Miss Kogane gave him a tour of the place, but he felt _weird_ barging into their room at seven-thirty in the morning. Still… Keith was awake… and he didn’t know how to care for Keith himself…

He knocked on their door, waited a few moments, and then knocked again. He accompanied this one with a simple, “Miss Kogane—Keith’s awake. I just gave him some pain killers.”

A startled, “Oh!” came from inside. “Okay—thank you, Lance! I’ll be out in just a moment.”

“No problem,” he said, and turned to leave. When he returned to the kitchen, Keith hadn’t moved an inch. His leg was bouncing on the ground, and when Lance came back, he tried to sit up straighter and stop himself from fidgeting. “Hey—what is it?” he said, his heart nearly stopping at the sight of how _weak_ Keith looked. 

Keith took a gasping breath, eyes shut as he shook his head. “Nothing.”

“You’re being ridiculous, just tell me.”

“Nothing—the painkillers just haven’t, um, they haven’t kicked in yet,” he explained.

Lance stepped around behind Keith’s chair and wrapped his arms around Keith’s neck. He pressed his cheek to Keith’s hair and let Keith clasp his hands to Lance’s wrists and squeeze tight. 

“I’m sorry—you don’t- you don’t have to do this,” Keith said, clearing his throat to do so. “I know this isn’t your forte or whatever.”

Lance hummed, rubbing his thumbs against Keith’s where they overlapped. “It’s fine. It’s more of the romantic bullshit and sexual stuff that gets me.”

“Gets you going?”

“Fuck off,” Lance huffed, and Keith laughed as they watched his mother hop down the steps and skip the last few. She stuck the landing as Lance loosened his grip and straightened up. He pushed a hand through Keith’s hair before moving away.

“Elena says she’s making French toast for breakfast,” Miss Kogane declared, sweeping into the kitchen and grabbing a boxed kit of gauze and pads from the countertop. “Keith, c’mon, living room.”

“Hngh… I don’t want to…” Keith moaned. “Please don’t make me.”

“Doctor’s orders, c’mon, c’mon,” she insisted.

“What? What do you have to do?” Lance asked, following them as Miss Kogane escorted Keith like a child being forced hug their relatives before leaving. 

“Change his wraps and eyedrops,” she said. “Would you like to help?”

“Sure!” he said, and his eagerness quickly faded the second she pulled the gauze off of Keith’s eye, and pealed the tape away.

It looked like someone had plucked out each and every one of his eyelashes before punching him square in the eye. It wasn’t swollen black-and-blue more so than it was _red_. Bright _red_ , and looked almost as though it was made of soft clay instead of flesh. Lance didn’t gag then, but after Miss Kogane wiped the eye and the seepy fluids on the corner of it, she went for the eye drops. He could tell Keith was struggling to hold his eye open, and his mom had to gently pull on it from his cheek and brow.

“Ow, ow, ow,” Keith hissed, clutching at the cushion. Lance held onto his hand.

His eye was barely open enough to see the whites of his eyes, but Lance realized belatedly that it was because the whites of his eyes were no longer white at all. 

Lance felt his stomach flip before he looked away and gagged, clasping a hand over his mouth. 

“Not so pretty right now, I know,” Miss Kogane said, giving Keith a pat on the arm after putting the eyedrops on his partially-closed eyelids. It would seep in, if only a little, but it was the best they could do with the pain that he was enduring. 

“Thanks mum,” Keith grunted.

She asked Lance to cut the tape for her as she laid a gauze patch over Keith’s eye. When Keith opened his good eye again, he gestured vaguely to the windows. “Too bright,” he said. 

“We could close them, or the two of you could head downstairs?” she suggested, looking to Lance. “We’ll bring breakfast down as soon as it’s ready.”

“I’d call this a five star bed and breakfast place, I have to say,” Lance said, managing to smile as Miss Kogane stood up with a laugh. “Thank you.”

“Oh, don’t even worry about it,” she said as she rolled up her sleeves, and met Elena in the kitchen just as the woman emerged from upstairs. “Took you long enough to get down.”

“Oh, hush up,” Elena laughed. 

Lance’s chest expanded as soon as it recovered from seeing how grotesque Keith’s eye was. It was impossible for him to believe that this was anything but a dream, and so he convinced himself that it was so that he could act normally instead of like the giddy fool he was. He was safe here, secure, and he’d have people watching over him like they did with Keith.

Keith held onto Lance’s arm as they descended the narrow staircase to the basement. Lance turned on the lights and dimmed them, but Keith told him he could just keep them completely off since the fireplace was on. 

Lance didn’t have much out, but when it came to putting his things away, he was awful at it. He never spent enough time in one place to fully settle in, and so from the sitting area, he could see his open suitcase full of his clothes despite the wardrobe resting in the corner. He left his violin case in the corner there, where it was propped up by the wardrobe and the wall beneath the long, narrow window at the ceiling. The case and all of its contents were his pride and joy—he always used to rent violins until the day his relatives all decided to chip in and help him pay for the one he had now, and would continue to use until it couldn’t continue to be repaired. It was expensive, and it meant everything to him—not just because of the price, but because of where it took him today.

So, as Keith sat down, Lance worried his lip between his teeth before telling Keith that he’d be right back. When he returned, Keith had his feet kicked up on the cushions until Lance approached with his violin case. He sat up straighter, saying, “What’re you…”

Lance aggressively shushed him. “You don’t need to look to listen to music. Just listen.”

“There’s this movie Hunk and I both love and we watch it together sometimes on flights, and the score is just incredible and we taught ourselves how to play it. It’s… it’s stupid, but sometimes we challenge each other to replicate entire songs just from one listen, and we make games out of it at practices when we get distracted. We’re not all stuffy, most of the time we aren’t, and it’s fun. 

“Allura says I’ve got, um, a talent for playing by ear. Because I’m able to recognize chords so well,” he explained, and absently scratched beneath his bad ear before undoing the clasps on his violin case. “Anyway, the movie. Right, so we both listened to the song once and then played it and it was a disaster but we just kept going even though it was a dumpster fire. And it got better, and we were in the full symphony practice and—honestly, you should’ve been there. Everyone knows we love that song but no one really knew it and so they all improvised around us and it was _in-sanity_. And I just want to play it for you, all right? Even if you’re, like, doped up on painkillers it’ll be great.”

Keith laughed and said, “Alright, I’m listening. [Go for it.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5FRwFTnbHo)”

Lance smiled nervously, not that Keith could see it from beyond his eyepatch. He brushed his sweaty hands over his pants before placing the case on the ground and lifting his violin and bow from it. The aged spruce wood never ceased to feel like a welcoming hand encouraging him to play, to show off his beautiful instrument to any willing to listen. It was hand-carved and coated in an oil varnish that gave in a sleek, everlasting shine that glowed orange under the firelight. He lifted the violin up by the waist of it, and positioned where it nestled in close to his jaw and neck. 

He cleared his throat involuntarily—it wasn’t like he was preparing to _sing_ or anything—and began with legato movements. He drew connections between the notes like one does wrapping string from one pin to the next on the map of the piece he never saw with his own eyes, but rather heard through repetition. Pieces like these moulded differently to his mind, seeing as they weren’t visual by any means. Instead, it came to him through the memory of listening to the combined atrocity that was his and Hunk’s start that clashed and came together.

His bowing became sharp, but rounded at the edges of each of the notes as he switched the movement of the bow forward and back. As the tension in the song mounted, his fingers climbed the E string, and the pitch became vibrant and as colorful as the notes none of them could see without closing their eyes.

He lifted the bowstrings for a brief pause before drawing them back in for another mellow ending to cycle the song back to its mild beginnings. He lowered his bow down, and opened his eyes to find Elena and Miss Kogane standing at the foot of the stairs, and then to Keith, who was openly staring at him. 

The four of them stared at one another before Elena shrieked and cried, “The toast!” She ran up the stairs, and Miss Kogane burst into laughter as the tension in Lance’s shoulders relaxed with his smile. 

“That was lovely, Lance,” she told him before hurrying to help Elena prevent the kitchen from burning. Lance tipped his violin onto his lap and grinned at Keith, who gave a quick shake of his head. 

“You’re insane. Play another,” Keith said, and Lance happily complied.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **L I N K S :**   
>  [amarukei](http://amarukei.tumblr.com/)   
>  [mistydragonflyart](http://mistydragonflyart.tumblr.com/)   
>  [girlskylark](http://girlskylark.tumblr.com/)


End file.
